Arts
Why sound beats image when it comes to memory
It’s often not visual images that stimulate memory but a smell, a taste, the sound of pebbles crashing on to…
Culture Buff
This is a very operatic time in Sydney; the SSO has just done Tristan & Isolde, OA has opened it’s…
Maestro maker
The writer and director Peter Bogdanovich has made three of my favourite films of all time (The Last Picture Show,…
Maestro maker
When Margaret Thatcher imagined perfect power, she thought of the orchestral conductor. ‘She envied me,’ said Herbert von Karajan, ‘that…
Maestro maker
When Margaret Thatcher imagined perfect power, she thought of the orchestral conductor. ‘She envied me,’ said Herbert von Karajan, ‘that…
Look back in anger
‘Cringe!’ said Boy, after I’d exposed him to a few seconds of last week’s special nostalgia edition of TFI Friday.…
Steve Hilton's model for policy reform: Glastonbury (yes, really)
Glastonbury is a model for radical policy reform, says Steve Hilton
Is this the greatest piano work of the 21st century?
The award of a knighthood to the composer James MacMillan will have ruined last weekend for lots of unsavoury people:…
The artist who turned the Hayward Gallery into Disney World
Gianlorenzo Bernini stressed the difficulty of making a sculpture of a person out of a white material such as marble.…
Patrick Marber’s Red Lion at the Dorfman reviewed: ‘the woman next to me yawned a lot’
For nine years Patrick Marber has grappled with writer’s block (which by some miracle doesn’t affect his screenplay work), but…
I dozed through it quite significantly: Mr Holmes reviewed
Mr Holmes stars Ian McKellen as the great detective in his old age and while it could have proved a…
Hans Werner Henze: the Ed Miliband of opera
We opera critics love gazing into crystal balls. We’re particularly good at discovering Ed Milibands and backing them to the…
The choreographer that does things to tango couples that Relate would not recommend
I often regret that I’m writing in the past tense here, but never more than about milonga. It is such…
Heroically unoriginal: Channel 4’s Humans reviewed
You’d think scientists might have realised by now that creating a race of super-robots is about as wise as opening…
Culture Buff
Surely the most luxuriously sensual of all operas, Tristan & Isolde makes voyeurs of us all. This opera is being…
A sting in the tail
Mr Holmes stars Ian McKellen as the great detective in his old age and while it could have proved a…
Walking with cadence
I often regret that I’m writing in the past tense here, but never more than about milonga. It is such…
Forward thinking
The award of a knighthood to the composer James MacMillan will have ruined last weekend for lots of unsavoury people:…
Forward thinking
The award of a knighthood to the composer James MacMillan will have ruined last weekend for lots of unsavoury people:…
Bad robots
You’d think scientists might have realised by now that creating a race of super-robots is about as wise as opening…
James Turrell interview: ‘I sell blue sky and coloured air’
Martin Gayford talks to the artist James Turrell, who has lit up Houghton Hall like a baroque firework display
Three tiny cheers for Mumford & Sons’ new album
Like a lot of essentially cautious people, I like my music to take some risks, play with fire and damn…
ENO’s Queen of Spades: I wanted to grab David Alden’s production by the neck and shake out its silly clutter
The opera director David Alden has never been one to tread the straight and narrow. Something kinky would emerge, I’m…
There's a reason why the past four centuries have ignored Shakespeare's King John
King John arrives at the Globe bent double under the weight of garlands from the London critics. Their jaunt up…
Stunning, riveting, horrifying: Joshua Oppenheimer's The Look of Silence reviewed
With Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing you’d be minded to think that’s it, that’s the Indonesian genocide (1965–66) done,…
