1970s
How Berlin nearly broke Bowie
This week’s Archive on 4 is a treat for David Bowie fans. Francis Whately, the producer behind several of the…
Ambitious, bold and confusing: BBC4’s Corridors of Power – Should America Police the World? reviewed
Narrated by Meryl Streep, Corridors of Power: Should America Police the World? announced the scale of its ambition straight away.…
No one should be doing indie rock at 43: Band of Horses's Things Are Great reviewed
Grade: B That thing, ‘indie rock’, is so well played and produced these days, so pristine and flawless, that it…
Oh dear, Abba’s new album is a bit of a dog: Voyage reviewed
Time has been very kind to Abba. No one back in the 1970s thought of them as geniuses. But they've even lost the talent for writing memorable tunes
Apocalypse, Seventies-style: BritBox's Survivors reviewed
When the apocalypse comes, I want it to be scripted by a 1970s screenwriter. That’s my conclusion after watching the…
A very watchable doc cashing in on Line of Duty: BBC2's Bent Coppers reviewed
If you’re after an exciting, twisty programme about police corruption that doesn’t also feel a bit like sitting an exam…
'You can't have opinions any more': Rick Wakeman interviewed
Rod Liddle talks to Rick Wakeman about lockdown, the Sex Pistols, and how you can’t have opinions any more
I could have directed it better: Steve McQueen's Small Axe reviewed
Unlike with every other BBC period drama series these days, I didn’t have to sit through Small Axe: Mangrove grumbling…
The artist who left no physical record of her work
While locked-down galleries compete to keep their artists in the public eye — or ear — by uploading interview podcasts,…
![Twiggy photographed by Justin de Villeneuve in the Rainbow Room at Big Biba, early 1970s. [JUSTIN DE VILLENEUVE]](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/USE_JDV_TW046.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
A short history of art deco – from high art to two-tone shoes, garden gates to Twiggy
On 10 September 1973 the 1930s Kensington High Street department store formerly known as Derry & Toms reopened as Big…
The best album of the year so far, by some margin
Grade: A+ While the young bands plunder the 1980s for every last gobbet of tinny synth and hi-hat, the singer-songwriters…
Law & Order, made – and banned – in 1978, puts most recent crime series in the shade
It’s not every day that a television screenwriter is threatened with a trial for sedition, but G.F. Newman was after…
Sound and vision
To get a reminder of how strange the 1970s were, there’s no need to plough through lengthy social and political…
Chaos among the commodes in Nina Stibbe’s old folks’ home
A card in a shop window — ‘non-unionised, auxiliary nurses sought… 35p per hour. Ideal for outgoing compassionate females’ —…
Verging on the corny: Martin Scorsese’s Vinyl reviewed
Vinyl (Sky Atlantic) — the much-anticipated series, co-produced by Martin Scorsese and Mick Jagger, about the 1970s New York record…
A rare moment of transcendence at the Royal Court
Illness forced Kim Cattrall to withdraw from Linda, the Royal Court’s new show, and Noma Dumezweni scooped up the debris…
The hatred that Martin Amis and Jeremy Corbyn have in common
Everyone loves an underdog. It doesn’t matter how incompetent they might be — indeed, incompetence works in their favour. You…
A crushing case for brutalism — with the people left out
Elain Harwood’s flawed but impressive study of modernist architecture manages perfectly to reflect its subject, says David Kynaston
If you thought politics was boring, you should check out today’s political theatre
How has political theatre fared during the coalition? Not very well, writes Lloyd Evans
Jaw-dropping confessions of a very un-PC Plod
There can’t have been many people who watched Confessions of a Copper (Channel 4, Wednesday) with a growing sense of…
When did it become OK to be boring?
Being boring was once the worst of all social sins. Now it’s practically compulsory
