Arts
The secret to a long and happy pop career? Don’t die
As everybody in the world except me seems to have seen Kate Bush’s live shows — against all apparent arithmetical…
Michael Tanner: Why I prefer Donizetti to Strauss
Three operas this week, each of them named after its (anti-)heroine: one of the heroines (the most sympathetic) murders her…
Can the Scots really be as small-minded, mistrustful and chippy as Spoiling suggests?
Referendum fever reaches Stratford East. Spoiling, by John McCann, takes us into the corridors of power in Holyrood shortly after…
Ignore the simplistic politics, Pride will make you laugh and cry
1984 and all that. Which side were you on? The side of Margaret Thatcher, her hairdo and person standing rigid…
Warhol’s ‘time capsules’ contain everything from toenails to previously unseen paintings worth millions
‘I don’t know what I think,’ says Lenny Henry, echoing what many of us who were listening were probably also…
Now for the really tricky question: can Only Connect survive BBC2?
For some of us, the biggest TV question of recent weeks hasn’t been how Newsnight is doing without Jeremy Paxman,…
Culture Buff
The village of Bibbenluke sits at the point where the Monaro Highway crosses the Bombala River. It’s beautiful, remote, and…
Power of one
As everybody in the world except me seems to have seen Kate Bush’s live shows — against all apparent arithmetical…
Power of one
As everybody in the world except me seems to have seen Kate Bush’s live shows — against all apparent arithmetical…
Pizza, choc-ice and Leonardos – the treasures of Turin
Laura Gascoigne enjoys a grand tour of Italy’s former capital city
The Bloomsbury painters bore me
Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) claimed that nothing has really happened until it has been recorded, so this new exhibition at the…
Enough ‘themes’ at festivals
One might have expected the streets of Edinburgh, especially at festival time, to bear some evidence of the political struggle…
Mariinsky’s Les Troyens — a bad night for Berlioz and Edinburgh
I wonder whether grand opéra really takes war as seriously as this year’s Edinburgh Festival wanted it to. These vast…
Before I Go to Sleep prefers creepy car parks to feelings
Before I Go To Sleep is Rowan Joffe’s adaptation of S.J. Watson’s bestselling thriller of 2011, but whereas the book…
Bent bureaucrats, ‘fake dykes’ and bad bakers — this week’s theatre
Eye of a Needle, by newcomer Chris MacDonald, looks at homosexuality and asylum. Gays from the Third World, who’ve suppressed…
Radio 4 deserts the British bird. Shame on them!
A strange coincidence on Saturday night to come back from the cinema, having seen a film about a woman fighting…
We need more opinionated English eccentrics making documentaries like, ahem, me...
Is it just me or are almost all TV documentaries completely unwatchable these days? I remember when I first started…
Even near the front line, there were flowers on the ward
It’s the tub of bright red geraniums at the heart of the picture that startles. How did anyone have time…
Culture Buff
After a red-carpeted fanfare the Emmy Awards were announced last week in LA. There is no hope for me; my…
Nursing on the front line
It’s the tub of bright red geraniums at the heart of the picture that startles. How did anyone have time…
Nursing on the front line
It’s the tub of bright red geraniums at the heart of the picture that startles. How did anyone have time…
Buried treasure
One might have expected the streets of Edinburgh, especially at festival time, to bear some evidence of the political struggle…
Buried treasure
One might have expected the streets of Edinburgh, especially at festival time, to bear some evidence of the political struggle…
The enigma of Werner Herzog
William Cook watches a new box set from the BFI that reveals the full extent of the German director’s genius – and insanity
The small rewards of small-scale opera
Neither OperaUpClose’s La traviata nor Finborough Theatre’s production of Boughton’s The Immortal Hour quite cut it
