Arts
Constable on sea
John Constable was, as we say these days, conflicted about Brighton. On the one hand, as he wrote in a…
The real deal
How about this for an inspiring response to what could have been a personal tragedy. Chi-chi Nwanoku was in the…
Country pleasures
The English weren’t the first cowpat composers. Jean-Philippe Rameau raised the art of frolicking in the fields to such heights…
David Hockney inside the exhibition at NGV
The impressive David Hockney Show which closed recently at the NGV, having attracted big crowds, will have left no one…
First Bourne
‘Modern’ dance was no laughing matter in 1987. Harold King, director of the now-defunct London City Ballet, cattily typified it…
Concrete cuckoo
The Catholic Church’s Second Vatican Council provides a salutary example of a tiny ‘elite’ foisting ‘anti-elitist’ practices on the ‘non-elite’…
Seeking closure
The Sense of an Ending is an adaptation of Julian Barnes’s 2011 Man Booker prize-winning novel starring Jim Broadbent (we…
The good, the indifferent and the simply awful
‘There is only one thing worse than homosexual art,’ the painter Patrick Procktor was once heard to declare at a…
Tales of the unexpected
It’s the oddest place to find a profound meditation on the death of Christ, but there it is on Radio…
Look back in anger
‘What we really need is a faux-historical drama series about police brutality and black activism set in 1970s London,’ said…
The decade the music died
For much of the past half-century, London has been the world’s orchestral capital. Not always in quality, but numerically without…
Law in action
It’s like Raging Bull. The great Scorsese movie asks if a professional boxer can exclude violence from his family life.…
Dazzled by Balanchine
A trio of dazzling scores, the soft clack of gemstones on hips and collarbones, a glittering parure of solos, duets…
Poetry in motion
Films can be poetry — or like poetry; or poetic, at least — but can poetry ever be film? That…
The future of Today
I wonder what Sarah Sands will do to Radio 4’s Today programme? She is the first editor in more than…
Bob Dylan: Triplicate
Having seen Bob Dylan play live a few years ago, I’m pretty sure he is not the first person I…
Blowing the bloody doors off
As we waited for curtain-up on Scottish Opera’s new production of Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Castle a member of staff walked out…
Piers Lane
Cyclone Debbie caused the cancellation of the announcement ceremony in Townsville for this year’s Australian Festival of Chamber Music but…
A woman of genius
‘Your favourite virtue?’ ‘I don’t have any: they are all boring,’ wrote the 21-year-old Camille Claudel in a Victorian album…
Home is where the art is
The house in which I lived in Tokyo was built by my landlady, a former geisha. It stood on a…
Age as allegory
Sky Atlantic — available only to Sky customers — has the cunning/infuriating policy of broadcasting the kind of programmes most…
Kill the DJ
Don Juan in Soho rehashes an old Spanish yarn about a sexual glutton ruined by his appetite. Setting the story…
Orb
Photographs of contemporary dance can look like advertisements for underwear; frequently the dancers seem to be clad in their knickers.…
Major to minor
Ghost in the Shell is the Hollywood live-action remake of the 1995 Japanese anime of the same name and it’s…
A word in your ear
Do you, or do you not, fork out for an audioguide — one of those necklace-like, strappy contraptions you’re offered…
