Arts
The bankers’ darling
This week’s Imagine… Jeff Koons: Diary of a Seducer (BBC1, Tuesday) began with Koons telling a slightly puzzled-looking Alan Yentob…
The moral case for gentrification
To gentrify or not to gentrify. That is the question, says Stephen Bayley
The most powerful man in classical music
When Margaret Thatcher imagined perfect power, she thought of the orchestral conductor. ‘She envied me,’ said Herbert von Karajan, ‘that…
She's Funny That Way isn't funny at all
The writer and director Peter Bogdanovich has made three of my favourite films of all time (The Last Picture Show,…
The finest Tristan since Siegfried Jerusalem
Which of Wagner’s mature dramas is the most challenging, for performers and spectators? The one you’re seeing at the moment,…
![‘Sculpture with Colour (Deep Blue and Red) [6]’, 1943, by Barbara Hepworth](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/exhibitions1.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
Was Barbara Hepworth a giant of modern sculpture - or a dreary relic of post-war Britain?
In the last two decades of her life, Barbara Hepworth was a big figure in the world of art. A…
We’ve forgotten just how attractive Jimmy Savile once was
Ho hum. Bit icky. Not bad. Hardly dazzling. The lukewarm response to An Audience With Jimmy Savile has astonished me.…
James Delingpole remembers why he never watched TFI Friday - because it's dreadful
‘Cringe!’ said Boy, after I’d exposed him to a few seconds of last week’s special nostalgia edition of TFI Friday.…
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…
