You cannot trust a single frame of any reality television show. I don’t mean they are deliberately mendacious, though some are, but nobody behaves normally when a camera is on them. Take those spontaneous conversations on speakerphone as someone bowls along in the car. You’re talking, you’re wondering if your hair is right, the poor
The date of George Frederick Bodley’s death (1907) offers a partial explanation for a commemorative exhibition, but ‘comes the hour, comes the man’ also applies, and in this case the man is Michael Hall, the editor of Apollo magazine, who for some years has studied Bodley’s work and succeeded in presenting it as a key
Reinhard Keiser is not a name that triggers many associations in most opera lovers’ minds, even the most frenzied devotees of the Baroque. He was a big figure in his time, though, and there have been odd recordings of his works, so he ranks with Traetta and Cimarosa from later in the 18th century as
One of the most gilded careers in our post-war musical life ends next week when Robert Tear sings in public for the last time. At least he thinks it will be the last time. ‘There’s nothing in the diary,’ he says. ‘But I’m not disappointed. After 50 years it is wonderful to be relieved of
‘Anyone in the building under 40?’ asks Johnny Rotten. Yes, I am (just): and, by the looks of things, about 20 others among 3,000-odd punters at the Brixton Academy, come to see the Sex Pistols in their middle-aged prime. Punk isn’t dead. It just drives a people-carrier these days. But age cannot wither these amazing
Well, it’s not as good as Monica Ali’s book. I’m not convinced it does the book justice. I didn’t think it captures the book. Is it true to the book? And blah-de-blah-de-blah, but if you want my advice, which you should, as I am very good at advice: ditch the book. This is a film
Is there a more irritating figure in British public life than Richard Branson? The beard, the cuddly sweaters, the toothy grin, the self-advertisement, the torments of the damned involved in travelling on one of his trains or planes. No news story in recent weeks has cheered me up as much as the one about Branson
The Arsonists, Royal Court; The Giant, Hampstead; The Bicycle, MenKing’s Head   Strange happenings in theatreland. Three London playhouses have taken it into their heads to mount a sustained attack on the avant garde. Result â” carnage! Careers are in tatters. Reputations have been shredded. Some of these playwrights will never be seen again.
One of the few certainties about Henry V is that every performance is a political act, or will certainly be read as such. On BBC2’s Newsnight Review the other day, Michael Gove wondered whether there’d been a single production since Olivier’s triumphalist film of 1944 that hadn’t been anti-war, anti-patriotic and anti-heroic. Although that isn’t
The blogosphere is threatening to take over the airwaves and even the great Eddie Mair is feeling ruffled. Last Saturday, half an hour of PM, his five o’clock current affairs programme on Radio Four, was hijacked by ‘the people’. Instead of running straight through till six, Mair had to break off halfway through to launch
For much of the summer my brother Dick spends his weekends either as a skirmisher with the Voltigeurs in Napoleon’s Grande Armée or depending on which side needs the extras as a redcoat of the 9th Regiment of Foot. He has frozen his balls off at the battle of Jena. He is fluent in complex
Eight thousand years ago the Thames was a tributary of the Rhine. And if the cities had actually existed, you would have been able to walk from London to Rome without getting your felt-bound feet wet. Since then, geology has given us the Channel, a practical and psychological barrier that defines national identity. The idea
The autumn brings a fine crop of new exhibitions, some of them even full of ‘mellow fruitfulness’. I have been watching the development of Julian Perry’s work over the past ten years with considerable pleasure, but his new show is his best yet. Perry has an eye for the details of suburban living and recreation,
In August 1766, the printmakers of Augsburg brought a case of plagiarism against the Veneto publishers and printmakers Remondini. One of the witnesses they summoned was Giuseppe Fietta, an itinerant pedlar, who was then doing the rounds of Bavaria selling Remondini’s Santi, or prints of saints. They were very popular with country-folk, Fietta explained, because
‘Transformed into a lavish pleasure-dome in the heart of Birmingham this dazzling event, with a spectacular design from Vick’s regular collaborator, Paul Brown, will make the auditorium shimmer with all the opulence and decadence of celebrity excess. The timeless story of call-girl Violetta is one of passion, money, sex and death. Having clawed her way
Theatre: Lotte’s Journey, Cloud Nine, Joe Guy Beware of plays that open on trains trundling through Europe in the 1940s. You know where they’re heading. The strength of Candida Cave’s new work, Lotte’s Journey, is that it evades cliché by telling the passengers’ stories in reverse. In particular we focus on Charlotte Saloman, a brilliant
This film is described on the posters as ‘a powerful and gripping story that digs behind the news, the politics and a nation divided to explore the human consequences of a complicated war’. Should you encounter this poster and should you have a marker pen upon you, you may wish to add graffiti beneath: ‘You
Solo behind the Iron Curtain (Radio Four), International Radio Playwriting Competition (BBC World Service) ‘I was pretty sure I was being followed,’ he said in that unforgettably sleek drawl. We are in Prague at the height of the Cold War in 1968 and Robert Vaughn, aka Mr Napoleon Solo, is under surveillance. Cue blazing trumpets
Joe’s Palace (BBC1), A Room with a View (ITV), River Cottage: Gone Fishing (Channel 4) The word ‘dream’ has different meanings, as in the greetings card: ‘May all your dreams come true, except the one about the giant hairy spiders’. Martin Luther King never said, ‘Brothers and sisters, I have a dream, and in this
Act one, scene one The curtain opens on the offices of The Spectator magazine, London SW1, where a woman stands, stage left, staring at a telephone. A clock on the wall says 7.15. Something about the woman’s demeanour suggests it to be p.m. How long can she look at a phone? Just as the audience
