Arts
Darkness visible
Perhaps you have sometimes wondered: how would you even begin to make a film about going blind and being blind…
Holy visions and dustbins
Woolworth’s spectacles. Pudding-basin haircut, rather sparse. Norfolk jacket. Pyjama cuffs below trouser legs and sleeves. Paints and brushes in an…
Darkness visible
Perhaps you have sometimes wondered: how would you even begin to make a film about going blind and being blind…
Moor four
Paradoxically, some ballet masterworks absolutely depend on tiptop performing to demonstrate how great they are. If they don’t get it,…
Fringe benefits
‘How do we feel about leaving the EU today? Who doesn’t give a fook?’ yelled Oli Sykes of Sheffield’s Bring…
Fringe benefits
‘How do we feel about leaving the EU today? Who doesn’t give a fook?’ yelled Oli Sykes of Sheffield’s Bring…
Money for nothing
Tate Modern’s new Switch House extension in London has been greeted with acclaim. It is a building designed in the…
Money for nothing
Tate Modern’s new Switch House extension in London has been greeted with acclaim. It is a building designed in the…
Tangled web
Mike Bartlett’s curious blank-verse drama Charles III became an international hit. His new effort examines the cut-throat world of dark-web…
Tangled web
Mike Bartlett’s curious blank-verse drama Charles III became an international hit. His new effort examines the cut-throat world of dark-web…
Light and shade
Comedy and tragedy sit close beside one another in Mozart’s operas. Whether it’s the grinning horror of the Così finale…
Light and shade
Comedy and tragedy sit close beside one another in Mozart’s operas. Whether it’s the grinning horror of the Così finale…
Refuge from the referendum
A brief encounter with Radio 4’s Any Questions to gauge the measure of opinion in the shires after the referendum…
Refuge from the referendum
A brief encounter with Radio 4’s Any Questions to gauge the measure of opinion in the shires after the referendum…
The big chill
It’s sadly possible to imagine that The Living and the Dead was sold to BBC1’s commissioning editors as ‘Poldark meets…
Jonathan Church
To mis-quote Lady Bracknell: losing an artistic director after just 9 months ‘smacks of carelessness’. That is exactly what has…
Madeleine moments
I’d just heard (on catch-up) Jenny Abramsky (a former director of BBC radio) telling Gillian Reynolds (the esteemed radio critic…
Home alone
The Secret Life of Pets is the latest animation from Illumination Entertainment, which also brought us Minions and Despicable Me,…
Animal crackers
The other evening I was driving back in heavy rain from my pilates class when I noticed something rather upsetting…
Jumbled up
‘In the end, nothing goes with anything,’ Lucian Freud remarked one afternoon years ago. ‘It’s your taste that puts things…
Show business
Sport has never held much appeal for me, so I rarely venture into stadiums. But I do appreciate their peculiar…
Face value
When Richard III’s bones were unearthed in a Leicester car park, Frankie Boyle suggested the headline ‘Bent royal found at…
The eyes have it
Tchaikovsky knew what he thought of the title character of his Eugene Onegin. ‘I loved Tatyana, and was furiously indignant…
Absolutely Fabulous
Absolutely Fabulous, which is about to make its cinema debut, is a comedy about women being useless. I watched it…
The eyes have it
Tchaikovsky knew what he thought of the title character of his Eugene Onegin. ‘I loved Tatyana, and was furiously indignant…
