Graham Greene in his ground-breaking essay on Beatrix Potter published in 1933 writes of ‘her great comedies’, her ‘great near-tragedies’ and ‘her Tempest’ (Little Pig Robinson). He calls Peter Rabbit and his cousin Benjamin ‘two epic personalities’ and invokes Dickens, Forster, Cervantes, Rabelais and Henry James as well as Shakespeare. He gets some of his
As we’ve seen in the past week, the full cost of providing services that no one asked for, digital radio and television, will fall on the licence-fee payer, with the BBC demanding annual increases of 2.5 per cent above inflation. It wasn’t entirely obvious in the early days of digital promotion that this was something
I was waiting to go on The Jeremy Vine Show to explain why it was I thought Dave Cameron had done the right thing by evading the drugs question when I got talking to the next guest, an American scientist who has just written a book on the biological effects of TV on the brain.
It is a sign of the times that the Great Autumn Show, which has been staged by the Royal Horticultural Society in London in mid-September since God was a small boy, is moving to a date in early October from next year. Autumn starts later and lasts longer; that’s official. And this at a time
For the past 20 years or more the auction houses have been doing their utmost to wrest the retail art market out of the hands of the dealers. Few would disagree that they have had considerable success. In taking over Sotheby’s in 1983, the Detroit shopping mall billionaire Alfred Taubman saw what he called ‘a
We live in a Post-Modernist age, or so we are told. Within it the legacy of Modernism clings on. The Modern movement in art, of course, based itself on the rejection of many typical 19th-century ideas, values and images. Post-Modernism is pluralistic and capable of accommodating revivals, however. One of the many possible positive readings
This is the season of the self-portrait. At the Royal Academy until 11 December are 150 self-portraits by Edvard Munch (reviewed in this column three weeks ago), the depth of his obsession bordering on sheer tedium. Just opening at the National Portrait Gallery is the first major museum study in this country of the self-portrait,
One of the hardest things about being a drama critic, at least for me, is that so many plays stubbornly resist categorisation — and Shoot the Crow by the Northern Irish writer Owen McCafferty is a prime example. Is it a comedy or a tragedy? Is it a proper, grown-up piece that wants to be
It was with the 1832 ballet La Sylphide that Marie Taglioni acquired international repute and legendary status. Her angel-like, gravity-defying dancing earned her the affectionate appellation ‘Christian’ dancer, which sits somewhat uncomfortably with the mischievous nature of the eponymous role. Stark contradictions, however, were typical of the Romantic era: the idealised woman could be angel
Stiletto heels, a baby’s dummy, Spice Girls ephemera and glittering embroidery — the predictable paraphernalia of womanhood is all on show in What Women Want. But the latest exhibition at the enterprising Women’s Library in the East End of London is underpinned by some surprising revelations. So we have a 1972 edition of Spare Rib
Nowadays ‘Kienholz’ is a brand. Its founder, Edward Kienholz (1927–94), was a self-taught artist who grew up on a farm on the borders of Washington and Idaho. He made a living as an odd-job man and drove a truck stencilled ‘Ed Kienholz Expert, Estab. 1952’, before co-founding a commercial art gallery and establishing a reputation
It was a story straight out of the Arabian Nights. Two immense temples are lifted high into the air, and transported to a remote desert site. At the same time an entire hill is created in order to replicate the original setting. Such, essentially, is the story of Abu Simbel. The twin temples of Abu
Norma Percy’s latest documentary, Israel and the Arabs: Elusive Peace (BBC2, Monday), was another remarkable production from Brook Lapping, a company that specialises in catching history on the fly, as it whizzes past. The first episode (of three) covered 1999 and 2000, when Bill Clinton became the latest US president to imagine that he could
The Hallé Orchestra launched its new season last week in Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall, with a rich programme featuring works by two late Romantic masters. They played Elgar’s Enigma Variations as well as one would expect of a band that enjoys an unparalleled relationship with that composer, and they performed Death and Transfiguration, one of Richard
Farewell to Bonfire Night, farewell to the heedless celebration of ‘gun- powder, treason and plot’. Events since 9/11 have branded us all with the grim reality of religiously inspired terrorism. Play after play now seeks to dramatise the underlying causes. Who’s to say that the theatre doesn’t stand at least as good a chance as
Welsh National Opera’s Don Carlos is a magnificent achievement, despite a fair number of more or less serious shortcomings. It establishes, at any rate, that this is by far the most probing and powerful of Verdi’s operas, while being, whichever rich selection of scenes is chosen, far from perfect. Despite its Wagnerian length, almost four
The visitor to the depressing subterranean galleries of Tate Britain might be forgiven for feeling a trifle bewildered in the first room of an exhibition unashamedly titled Degas, Sickert and Toulouse-Lautrec. To the left is James Tissot and to the right a vast canvas of Paddington Station by the little-known Sidney Starr (1857–1925), who departed
If you are driving along the A14 coming west towards Cambridge, the tower of Bury St Edmunds cathedral suddenly pops up on the skyline at a bend in the road. I saw it this way in March, when the pinnacles, battlements and ogee windows first emerged from plastic sheeting and scaffolding. By June, the whole
Now that my children attend a state primary, I naturally have more of a vested interest in the future of our education system than I did in that brief moment of idiocy when I allowed my wife to persuade me that I could afford to send them private. I haven’t read what either of the
The 2005 Dance Umbrella season kicked off last week with the London debut of the Forsythe Company, created after William Forsythe’s longstanding and successful collaboration with Frankfurt Ballet ended for debatable administrative and artistic reasons. The event attracted an audience of electrified Forsythe diehards, but was not memorable. The oddly mixed programme started with two