Lana Del Ray

Monday

August 19, 2024

This month in culture: September 2024

Slow Horses, season 4 Apple TV+, September 4 Apple TV+’s adaptations of Mick Herron’s excellent espionage novels, led by Gary Oldman on magnificent form as the belching, flatulent, brilliant Jackson Lamb, have quietly become the streaming service’s MVP, and their strong showing in this year’s Emmy nominations has reinforced the company’s continued faith in the unmissable series. This fourth installment, based on Herron’s novel Spook Street, guest stars the ever-excellent Hugo Weaving as a mysterious interloper with a close personal connection to Jack Lowden’s bratty Bond-in-training River Cartwright. Expect the usual mixture of big laughs, shocking twists and high-octane action scenes.

Tuesday

November 10, 2020

Cockburn

Joe Biden’s shaky songsheet

In his victory speech on Saturday night, Joe Biden quoted the 1970s Roman Catholic hymn, ‘On Eagle’s Wings’. The President-elect said that its message helped him cope with his various personal tragedies, which are undoubtedly very real and sad. Still, Cockburn wonders whether Biden is correct in his assessment that this particular hymn ‘captures the faith that sustains’ America. If Biden is right about that, then Cockburn wonders whether the ‘battle for the soul’ of the nation was even worth having.Of course, Cockburn doesn’t pretend to be a Catholic, let alone a good one, but having borrowed a friend’s Bible, he suspects that the hymn in question — a bastardization of Psalm 91 — rather misses the point.