Arts
Model villages aren't just for kids
Model villages deliver a cheerful jolt to unexamined notions about our own place – and size – in the world, says Richard Bratby
The artistic response to the pandemic has so far been mind-numbingly banal
Travelling around Latin America three years ago, Stephen Chambers was attracted by pharmacy signs with pictograms advertising treatments to illiterate…
Mystery portrait
Shortly after moving to Manhattan in the noughties I was strolling through the West Village when I came across a…
David Hockney A closer winter tunnel, February-March 2006
The National Gallery of Victoria has closed again ‘until further notice’. The rest of the country is more fortunate, at…
James Graham's small new drama is exquisite: BBC Four's Unprecedented reviewed
Let’s face it. Theatre via the internet is barely theatre. It takes a huge amount of creativity and inventiveness to…
The best podcasts for all your corona-gardening needs
The American diet was probably at its healthiest in the second world war. Fearing interruption to supply chains, Washington launched…
Held me so fast I was outbid on eBay: Clemency reviewed
Clemency stars Alfre Woodard as a prison warden on death row whose job is beginning to take its toll, and…
The guileful, soulful art of Khadija Saye
Gwyneth Paltrow has a new neighbour. On the same block in Notting Hill as Gwynie’s Goop store, with its This…
Beethoven 32 piano sonatas were his musical laboratory – here are the best recordings
If you want to understand Beethoven, listen to his piano sonatas. Without them, you’ll never grasp how the same man…
Drive-in cinemas are back – but for how long?
Tanya Gold on the rise and fall of drive-in cinema
Michaela Coel's dazzling finale reminds me of Philip Roth: I May Destroy You reviewed
It might seem a bit of a stretch to see deep similarities between Michaela Coel (young, female, black and currently…
Relief
Recently I touched on the subject of evaluating works of art prompted by what seemed to me rather an empty…
Jessie Traill: A biography
She could have been one of our great-aunts. She was from that remarkable generation of educated, unmarried women who chose…
Portrait of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic – Britain's oldest and ballsiest orchestra
Richard Bratby on Britain’s oldest and ballsiest orchestra, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, which has taken on everyone from gang leaders to Derek Hatton
Ranges from the slight to the first-rate: Neil Young’s Homegrown reviewed
Grade: B+ Neil Young has been mining his own past very profitably for a long time now, disinterring a seemingly…
Not even a genius could make Much Ado About Nothing funny
The RSC’s 2014 version of Much Ado is breathtaking to look at. Sets, lighting and costumes are exquisitely done, even…
I want to support cinema but I have my work cut out with Love Sarah
Some cinemas have reopened, with the rest to follow by the end of the month, thankfully. But the big, hotly…
The joy of socially distanced gallery-going
Not long after the pubs, big galleries have all started to reopen, like flowers unfolding, one by one. The timing…
The weird and wonderful world of hotel carpets
Sophie Haigney on the weird and wonderful world of hotel carpets
Britain's choirs are facing oblivion
Britain’s choirs are facing oblivion. Yet they’re also terrified of returning. One story explains why. Picture this innocent choral-society scene…
Wendy Bowman, 2019 by David Darcy Darling Portrait Prize 2020
She is not a theoretical or idealogical environmentalist. Wendy Bowman became an activist when her crops were ruined by polluted…
A documentary about the M25 that will make your heart soar
When a 90-minute documentary is introduced with the words ‘This is the M25’, you’d be within your rights not to…
Culture is going underground: meet the rebel army
Leaf Arbuthnot and Igor Toronyi-Lalic on the new cultural rebels
Dysfunctional music for dysfunctional people: The Public Image is Rotten reviewed
A star is born, but instead of emerging into the world beaming for the cameras, he spits and snarls and…
Chaotic, if good-natured, muddle: Hytner’s Midsummer Night’s Dream reviewed
Nicholas Hytner’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream opens in a world of puritanical austerity. The cast wear sombre black costumes and…
