Arts
Harry Styles has entered his imperial phase – but his music still has no distinct identity
At the turn of this century, looking back on the late 1980s when the Pet Shop Boys could do no…
On the brink of delivering something special: Sky's The Midwich Cuckoos reviewed
A youngish couple leave London and drive off excitedly to make a fresh start in more rural surroundings. They demonstrate…
A mess: British Museum's Feminine Power – the Divine to the Demonic reviewed
The point at which the heart sinks in this exhibition is, unfortunately, right at the outset. That’s where we meet…
Nationalise the royal collection!
It is high time we did justice to the treasures of the royal collection, says Jack Wakefield
Newcomers will need to read the play in advance: Julius Caesar, at the Globe, reviewed
Some things are done well in the Globe’s new Julius Caesar. The assassination is a thrilling spectacle. Ketchup pouches concealed…
Serves Ethel Smyth's opera magnificently: Glyndebourne's The Wreckers reviewed
You’ve got to hand it to Dame Ethel Smyth. Working in an era when to be a British composer implied…
A self-regarding take on I’m-not-sure-what: Bergman Island reviewed
Bergman Island sounds, on first acquaintance, like a theme-park attraction. Roll up, roll up! Let us speed you through the…
Wizardly wham-bam
It’s an extraordinary thing in its way to revisit Harry Potter and the Cursed Child three years after its triumphant…
A brief introduction to Scottish art
When Nikolaus Pevsner dedicated his 1955 Reith Lectures to ‘The Englishness of English Art’, he left out the Scots. The…
The return of the implausibly more-ish Borgen
Borgen star Sidse Babett Knudsen talks to Jasper Rees about why, after a break of ten years, the implausibly more-ish series is returning for a fourth season
Oddly unconvincing: Apple TV+'s The Essex Serpent reviewed
Having now watched it to the end, I would say that Slow Horses (Apple TV+) is by far the best…
Touching, eclectic and exhilarating: Rambert Dance is in great shape
Rambert ages elegantly: it might just rank as the world’s oldest company devoted to modern dance (whatever that term might…
Hard to believe this rambling apprentice-piece ever made it to the stage: Almeida's The House of Shades reviewed
The House of Shades is a state-of-the nation play that covers the past six decades of grinding poverty in Nottingham.…
How I fell in love with the blues
I was never into the blues that much. I listened to a bit of Roy Buchanan and Rory Gallagher but…
Claude Vivier ought to be a modern classic. Why isn't he?
April is the cruellest month, but May is shaping up quite pleasantly and the daylight streamed in through the east…
The cruelty of reality TV was part of the appeal
Jade Goody appeared on Big Brother in 2002. She was a short, loud, blonde-haired woman who broadcast her every thought…
You certainly don’t watch Top Gun for the script
Top Gun is back, nearly 40 years after the original, with reprised roles for Tom Cruise (59) and Val Kilmer…
Great Tenor, shame about the bric-a-brac
Lohengrin is early, just after Tannhäuser in the cavalcade of Wagner’s masterpieces, with a swan-drawn Arthurian hero in thrall to…
The jewel-bright, mesmerisingly detailed pictures by Raqib Shaw are a revelation
Describing the Venice Biennale, like pinning down the city itself, is a practical impossibility. There is just too much of…
Boldly and brilliantly unoriginal: Kermode and Mayo’s Take reviewed
Last April Fools’ Day, Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo wound up their award-winning film review show on BBC Radio 5…
I’m not sure they ever reached a fourth chord: Spiritualized, at the Roundhouse, reviewed
Every so often, Jason Pierce drifts into focus. It happened at the end of the 1980s, when his then group…
Quietly devastating: Benediction reviewed
Terence Davies’s Benediction is a biopic of the first world war poet Siegfried Sassoon told with great feeling and tenderness.…
Even Nelsons’s miscalculations are fascinating: Leipzig Gewandhaus/Andris Nelsons, at the Barbican, reviewed
Imagine growing up with a whole orchestra as your plaything. Richard Strauss’s father was the principal horn of the Munich…
The playwright seems curiously detached about rape: The Breach, at Hampstead Theatre, reviewed
Hampstead’s latest play is a knotty rape drama by Naomi Wallace set in Kentucky. Four teenagers with weird names meet…
The nightmare of making films about poets
Craig Raine on the challenges of translating poets’ lives and work to the screen
