Arts
His Master’s Feet
Gerald Barry once licked Beethoven’s carpet. At least, that’s what he told me, and I’m as sure as any interviewer…
Tall story
‘Everything is slow in Romania,’ said our driver Pavel resignedly, and, as it turned out, he was not exaggerating. He…
Trouble in paradise
‘Riviera is the new Night Manager,’ I read somewhere. No, it’s not. Riviera (Sky Atlantic, Thursday) is the new Eldorado…
Peter Perrett: How The West Was Won
Much though I loved it at the time, not a great deal of lasting worth came out of that fervid…
Twin peaks
In an essay called ‘Wagner’s fluids’, Susan Sontag concludes, ‘The depth and grandeur of feeling of which Wagner is capable…
Hymn to self-slaughter
Anatomy of a Suicide looks at three generations of women in various phases of mental collapse. They line up on…
Listen with mother
This week’s column is dedicated to my mother who loved her radio and encouraged us to be listeners. Without her,…
Tom Conroy as Winston Smith
‘It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.’ That is the arresting opening line…
Kissin in action
Is Evgeny Kissin, born in Moscow in 1971, the most famous concert pianist in the world? Probably not, if you…
1944 and all that
The star of this film is the music, composed by Lorne Balfe. I really liked it, which was just as…
The better angels of our nature
Late one afternoon, early in the year, I was walking through the Vatican Stanze with a small group of critics…
Detroit spinner
When techno first appeared amid the urban wasteland of mid-1980s Detroit, its futuristic sound palette was inspired by the whirring…
Making history
‘History is not the past,’ says the writer Hilary Mantel in the first of her Reith Lectures on Radio 4…
Never knowingly understated
At one uncharacteristically low-key point in Sunday’s Poldark — back for a third series on BBC1 — Ross (Aidan Turner)…
Party piece
The National Theatre could hardly resist Barber Shop Chronicles. The play shines a light on a disregarded ethnic community, black…
Art of darkness
Brett Dean’s new opera for Glyndebourne is a big-hearted romantic comedy, sunny and life-affirming. Only joking — this is contemporary…
A N Wilson and Resolution
A sold-out session at the Sydney Writers’ Festival was an indication of public interest in the writer, A. N. Wilson,…
Triple thrill
Thrilling debuts, starry guests and a tear-stained farewell at Covent Garden this week as the Royal Ballet closed the season…
Static electricity
My Cousin Rachel is an adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s mystery-romance and, even though it stars the forever wonderful Rachel…
Diary stories
By chance on Saturday morning, I tuned into Radio 4 and heard Professor Clare Brant talking on Saturday Live about…
How the west coast was won
There’s an incredibly addictive old iPhone game called Doodle God where you effectively invent civilisation from scratch by combining basic…
Snoop Dogg: Neva Left
The problem Calvin Broadus has is persuading the rest of us that he still a baaaad muthafucka. Snoop is now…
White-knuckle ride
Playing in an orchestra that disintegrates mid-concert is not an experience you forget. One moment everything’s motoring along nicely. Suddenly…
Glamming it up
Late on the Friday afternoon of The Great Escape — the annual three-day event for which the London music industry…
Myths and morals
Handel’s Semele, one of the most enjoyable operas (or opera-oratorio, if you insist) in the repertoire, is, in its upshot,…
