Arts
From Brexit to Beethoven: John Humphrys returns to radio
Some listeners will have had quite a shock first thing on Monday. Turning on at six to Classic FM they…
Scooby Doo with better CGI: Doctor Sleep reviewed
Wheeeere’s Johnny? Nearly 40 years ago Jack Nicholson went berserk in a snowbound Rockies hotel, smashing an axe through a…
In his new piano concerto Thomas Ades’s inspiration has completely dried up
There’s nothing like a good piano concerto and, sad to relate, Thomas Adès’s long-awaited first proper attempt at the genre…
John Singer Sargent’s Madame X
Baron François Gérard would be astonished that his vast 1825 painting of The Coronation of Charles X is the inspiration…
How did Richard Herring become the comedy podcast king?
What does it mean to be a successful comic? Richard Herring isn’t sure. He’s been a ‘professional funnyman’ for nearly…
The real Lucian Freud hated having his picture taken
One of Lucian Freud’s firmly fixed views about himself was ‘I’m not at all introspective’. This was, like many opinions…
![English National Opera's triumphant new production of Harrison Birtwistle's The Mask of Orpheus, directed by Daniel Kramer. [Photo: Alistair Muir]](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Opera_Exhibitions.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
A triumph: ENO’s Mask of Orpheus reviewed
ENO’s Mask of Orpheus is a triumph. It’s also unintelligible. Even David Pountney, who produced the original ENO staging in…
A 90-minute slog up to a dazzling peak: ‘Master Harold’… and the boys reviewed
Athol Fugard likes to dump his characters in settings with no dramatic thrust or tension. A prison yard is a…
Can giving voice to the horrors of the past re-traumatise?
It is 50 years since Ronald Blythe published Akenfield, his melancholy portrait of a Suffolk village on the cusp of…
![Praise be to Mary MacLeod Trump. [Photo: The LIFE Picture Collection / Getty Images]](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/TV_4.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
If we do get a good Anglo-American trade deal, we should thank Trump’s mother
In an uncharacteristic fit of almost-robustness, Culture Secretary Nicky Morgan has said she is ‘open-minded’ about scrapping the BBC licence…
The best Terminator film since the first: Terminator Six reviewed
The first Terminator film, which came out in 1984, was a high-concept sci-fi serial killer thriller. You can just imagine…
![Slowthai at the Brixton Academy. [Photo: Visionhaus]](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Pop_1.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
Something great
Those who cherish the notion that the current prime minister really is ‘electoral Viagra’ should have paid a visit to…
![Andrew Tink. [Photo: Elizabeth Tink]](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/CB_26.10.19.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
Andrew Tink
A serious bout of ill-health forced him to abandon a successful career in politics but, in the intervening 10 years,…
The enduring allure of ‘er indoors
‘She’s only a bird in a gilded cage, a beautiful sight to see. You may think she’s happy and free…
The beauties of the universe are revealed in the paintings of Pieter de Hooch
In the early 1660s, Pieter de Hooch was living in an area of what we would now call urban overspill…
Manon can be magnificent, this one was merely meh
Manon: minx or martyr? There are two ways to play Kenneth MacMillan’s courtesan. Is Manon an ingénue, a guileless country…
Malcolm Arnold was a traumatised wreck of a man at his death but his music was joyous!
Never meet your heroes, they say. But if you grew up with classical music in the 1980s, there was fat…
The beauty of Soviet anti-religious propaganda
Deep in the guts of Russian library stacks exists what remains — little acknowledged or discussed — of a dead…
At their best the Psychedelic Furs are fantastic
It’s amazing what the movies can do. In 1986, the John Hughes teen flick Pretty in Pink — the one…
Should we be playing the surveillance state for laughs? Celebrity Hunted reviewed
One of the many great things about The Capture was that we could never be sure whether the British authorities’…
Without Joe Grundy The Archers feels lost
There was something really creepy about listening to the ten-minute countryside podcast released last weekend by Radio 4 supposedly transporting…
A hoot from start to finish: The Man in the White Suit reviewed
The Man in the White Suit, famously, is a yarn about yarn. A brilliant young boffin stumbles across an everlasting…
The Disney sequel that no one wanted is finally here – what a relief! Maleficent: Mistress of Evil reviewed
Maleficent: Mistress of Evil is the sequel to the 2014 film Maleficent, and it will certainly come as a relief…
Shirley Hazzard
A woman working on a thesis about Shirley Hazzard is a character in A Life to Come, the award-winning novel…
Pilferer, paedophile and true great: Gauguin Portraits at the National Gallery reviewed
On 25 November 1895, Camille Pissarro wrote to his son Lucien. He described how he had bumped into his erstwhile…
