Arts
Boring is as good as this erotic drama gets: Netflix’s Obsession reviewed
It is, of course, traditional for film and TV reviewers to demonstrate their steely high-mindedness by claiming that anything describing…
Rossetti’s muse was a better painter than him: The Rossettis, at Tate Britain, reviewed
‘A queer fellow’ is how John Everett Millais described Dante Gabriel Rossetti after his death, ‘so dogmatic and so irritable…
London theatre-goers have peculiar tastes
The Secret Life of Bees is a fairy-tale set in the Deep South in 1964. Lily, a bullied white girl,…
The last unashamedly happy masterpiece: Haydn’s The Creation, at Ulster Hall, reviewed
Haydn’s The Creation is Paradise Lost without the Lost. True, the words aren’t exactly up there: translated into German by…
Glorious: Elton John’s farewell tour, at the O2 Arena, reviewed
Elton John has now been retiring for nearly five years. The Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour began in Allentown, Pennsylvania,…
So tastelessly disturbing it forgets to say anything: Sick of Myself reviewed
Sick of Myself is a satire from Norway that skewers the ‘look at me, look at me’ generation addicted to…
What the V&A Dundee exhibition doesn’t tell you about tartan
Angus Colwell is not convinced that the V&A Dundee’s exhibition Tartan is what the city needs
The pity of war
‘My subject is war and the pity of war,’ Wilfred Owen wrote in the poems which Benjamin Britten set to…
One of the best things you’ll see on TV this year: Netflix’s War Sailor reviewed
War Sailor (Krigsseileren), a three-part drama on Netflix about the Norwegian merchant navy in the second world war, is one…
Time for Akram Khan to move on from climate-change choreography
It must be 20 years since I first saw Akram Khan dance, and I will never forget the impression he…
Reframes Patricia Highsmith as a gay icon – and ignores her anti-Semitism: Loving Highsmith reviewed
I first discovered writer Patricia Highsmith (Strangers on a Train, Carol, the five Ripley novels) as a young teenager working…
Crossing Continents is the best of the BBC
Ask a member of Generation Z where in the world they would most like to live, and chances are they…
Is milk racist?
I was tired when I went to see Milk at the Wellcome Collection, having been up for much of the…
Why can’t I let go of my records?
I’m not a natural lender. I’m a reasonably soft touch when it comes to money, but regarding the important things…
An epic bore: A Little Life, at the Harold Pinter Theatre, reviewed
A Little Life, based on Hanya Yanagihara’s novel, is set in a New York apartment shared by four mega-successful yuppies:…
An old production that’s aged better than most: Royal Opera’s Turandot reviewed
Since its première in 1984, Andrei Serban’s production of Puccini’s Turandot has been revived 15 times at Covent Garden, not…
Why Christopher Wren died thinking his life had been a failure
Adrian Tinniswood on the fall and rise — and fall and rise — of England’s greatest architect
Erotic intensity
We think of television – even in this age of a thousand streamers – as something we pig out on…
Felt like the product of a night in the pub: BBC1’s Great Expectations reviewed
By now a genuinely radical way to turn a Victorian novel into a TV drama would be to take that…
Deeply unsatisfying: Berlusconi – A New Musical, at Southwark Playhouse Elephant, reviewed
Berlusconi: A New Musical, an excellent title, has opened at a new venue in south London, Southwark Playhouse Elephant. The…
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Godland reviewed
Godland is a film to see on the big screen: not just for its awesome, immersive cinematography, but because it…
Distressingly vulgar: Royal Ballet’s Cinderella reviewed
Despite its widespread rating as one of his masterpieces, Frederick Ashton’s Cinderella is chock full of knots, gaps and stumbling…
Artists’ dogs win the rosettes: Portraits of Dogs – From Gainsborough to Hockney, at the Wallace Collection, reviewed
Walking on Hampstead Heath the December before Covid, I got caught up in a festive party of bichon frises dressed,…
A look inside Britain’s only art gallery in jail
Stuart Jeffries meets the prisonerartists of HMP Grendon
