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Burnham’s Britain and Wales’s absurd decolonisation drive – with Antony Beevor | The Edition

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Spectator Life

An intelligent mix of culture, food, style and property, plus where to go and what to see.

Anonymous

The Ghostwriter

From Spectator Life

In a pleasant but modest one-and-a-half-bedroom flat in Crouch End, the half bedroom-cum-boxroom boasts a bookshelf that indicates eclectic taste on the part of its owner. Amongst its dozen or so volumes are a score-settling memoir by a disgraced royal lady-in-waiting, petulantly entitled I Also Served, You Know; a revisionist history of WWII written by a television weatherman, called I Wish We Were German; and, most remarkably, a collection of homoerotic sonnets in the Petrarchan style that were privately printed at the behest of the former global finance director at Goldman Sachs.

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Simply red

Andy Burnham’s centrist act isn’t fooling anyone

Tim Shipman

Andy Burnham’s centrist act isn’t fooling anyone

When Ed Miliband and Shabana Mahmood arrived in Downing Street on Monday afternoon, the image of political rivals arm in arm symbolised a new government of differing views taking shape. It might have been more awkward. As they neared the door of No. 10 and the waiting television cameras, Miliband turned to Mahmood and asked: ‘Should we turn around for a photo together?’ Mahmood gave the idea short shrift: ‘We’re not getting married, Ed!’ But in a sense Labour is seeking a new relationship with the British public and everyone around Andy Burnham is alive to the importance of images, symbols and vibes. As Wes Streeting, the new Defence Secretary, put it in cabinet on Tuesday: ‘We have a second chance to make a first impression with the voters.

Tim Shipman

Andy Burnham’s centrist act isn’t fooling anyone

When Ed Miliband and Shabana Mahmood arrived in Downing Street on Monday afternoon, the image of political rivals arm in arm symbolised a new government of differing views taking shape. It might have been more awkward. As they neared the door of No. 10 and the waiting television cameras, Miliband turned to Mahmood and asked: ‘Should we turn around for a photo together?’ Mahmood gave the idea short shrift: ‘We’re not getting married, Ed!’ But in a sense Labour is seeking a new relationship with the British public and everyone around Andy Burnham is alive to the importance of images, symbols and vibes. As Wes Streeting, the new Defence Secretary, put it in cabinet on Tuesday: ‘We have a second chance to make a first impression with the voters.

Culture

The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.

Richard Bratby

A Sound of Music with brains as well as heart

From the magazine

If you’re interested in how words work with music, the collected lyrics of Stephen Sondheim are an investment you’ll never regret. But Sondheim isn’t infallible, and when he writes about his mentor Oscar Hammerstein II he’s often plain wrong. Sondheim mocks one particular lyric from The Sound of Music: ‘Like a lark that is learning to pray.’ ‘Wait a minute – a lark praying?’ he snarks. But the character who sings those words is a devout young Austrian woman with a head full of Schubert and folksongs. Hammerstein is writing as Maria, not himself. It’s an art that Sondheim never quite mastered, which is why his characters – whether Swedish aristocrats or East End cannibals – all sound like New Yorkers in therapy.

Podcasts

Cartoons

Wilbur

‘‘How many prime ministers have I missed?’’

Cartoon

KJ Lamb

‘‘He’s not the messiah, he’s a very northern boy.’’

Cartoon

Bernie

‘‘Andy wants to tour the country and meet some of his subjects’’

Cartoon

muffuletta

Olivia Potts

My quest for the perfect muffuletta

From Spectator Life