Arts
Cabbages and kings
The first pastry cook Chaïm Soutine painted came out like a collapsed soufflé. The sitter for ‘The Pastry Cook’ (c.1919)…
Faulty connection
There’s no doubting her passion for the programme of which she is now chief of staff. Talking to Roger Bolton…
Pretty vacant
Alice is at it again. Christopher Wheeldon’s 2011 three-act ballet began another sell-out run at Covent Garden last week. It’s…
Back to the future
Ridley Scott’s original Blade Runner first came out in cinemas 35 years ago, which I was going to say probably…
Mourning glory
On the face of it, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds aren’t exactly a natural fit with the O2. Cave’s…
The Merry Widow
Not everyone celebrates a 55th anniversary, but if you are a national ballet company at the peak of its form,…
Playing it safe
BBC1’s latest Sunday-night drama The Last Post, about a British military base in Aden in 1965, feels like a programme…
Vice and virtue
‘Can the ultimate betrayal ever be forgiven?’ screams the publicity for The Judas Passion, transforming a Biblical drama into a…
Pole position
Did you know that they used to make the Fiat 126 in the Eastern bloc? They did, apparently. There was…
Verbal diarrhoea
In Beckett’s Happy Days a prattling Irish granny is buried waist-deep, and later neck-deep, in a refuse tip whose detritus…
Savage beauty
Could it, at times, be frustrating to have taken one of the world’s most famous photographs? Steve McCurry’s ‘Afghan Girl’…
Split decision
Think back to that morning in September 1967 when the Light Programme was split in two, Tony Blackburn launching Radio…
Vital signs
Exhibit A. It is 1958 and you are barrelling down a dual carriageway; the 70 mph limit is still eight…
Beauty and the beast
I was going to start with a little moan. About the shouty marketing, the digital diarrhoea, the sycophantic drivel, which,…
Sound and vision
To get a reminder of how strange the 1970s were, there’s no need to plough through lengthy social and political…
Terracotta bust of Edmund Barton by Nelson Illingworth (c.1901)
Although they are not especially grand, these houses are arguably the most significant in the country. The four official residences…
No pain, no gain
The best episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm are the ones that make you want to hide behind the sofa, cover…
Unhappy days
Scriptwriters love to feast on the lives of children’s authors. The themes tend not to vary: they may have brought…
I spy
Where was Degas standing as he sketched his ‘Laundresses’ (c.1882–4)? Did he watch the two women from behind sheets hanging…
Woman of a thousand voices
‘On air, I could be the most glamorous, gorgeous, tall, black-haired female… Whatever I wanted to be, I could be……
Bloody minded
Tristan Bernays loves Hollywood blockbusters. His new play, Boudica, is an attempt to put the blood-and-guts vibe of the action…
Fickle fortune
Here’s an intriguing thought experiment: could Damien Hirst disappear? By that I mean not the 52-year-old artist himself — that…
The icemen cometh
You wouldn’t want to stumble upon the Scythians. Armed with battle-axes, bows and daggers, and covered in fearsome tattoos, the…
Loose ends
On Sunday night, Holliday Grainger was on two terrestrial channels at the same time playing a possibly smitten sidekick of…
LCD Soundsystem: American Dream
Grade: B+ Number one. Everywhere, just about. You have to say that the man has a certain sureness of touch.…
