Finger pickin’ good
Books and ArtsBanjo virtuoso Béla Fleck has reinvented his instrument and retraced its roots
Culture
The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
March 20, 2020
Please, please let COVID-19 kill the culture wars
Is it so much to ask?
March 18, 2020
Netflix sued for defamation over Central Park Five miniseries
Did the filmmakers’ hunger for retribution outweigh their commitment to tell the truth?
March 17, 2020
The refreshing darkness of Netflix’s Locke & Key
Books and ArtsThe world before woke
March 13, 2020
The human clay
Books and ArtsAs he collects more than three decades of thinking and writing about sculpture into a new book, Eric Gibson introduces a few of his favorite things
March 11, 2020
I hope Artie Lange is OK
In appreciation of the legendary comedian
Mass appeal: Stanford in Stamford
Books and ArtsAn American debut, only a century late
March 9, 2020
The real McCoy
In memory of McCoy Tyner
March 3, 2020
‘All rock ’n’ roll starts and ends with Lou Reed’
Books and ArtsOur rock critic has made an album with R.E.M.’s Peter Buck. Here he explains how…
Uniform beats
Books and ArtsKraftwerk: Future Music from Germany by Uwe Schütte reviewed
March 2, 2020
Bernie $anders is a public enemy
I’m voting for Flavor Flav
An old master who still feels new
Books and ArtsEl Greco is at the Art Institute of Chicago. Can we trust the modernists on the gifts of ‘The Greek’?
February 26, 2020
Urbino legend
Books and ArtsThe chance of a lifetime for lovers of Raphael
February 24, 2020
Washington returns history to the History Channel
The foundingest father of them all
February 22, 2020
Cyrus the Great
Books and ArtsA night at Blues Alley with the mighty Chestnut
February 21, 2020
Wells farrago: gaslighting the Invisible Man
Books and ArtsPriapic shower-stalking and domestic haunting were never Wells’s style – not on the page, anyway
Cats: The Snuff Movie
Books and ArtsToo many Netflix true-crime documentaries are tiresome and overlong. This one was a lot worse than that
February 16, 2020
The true cost of celebrity inauthenticity
Our heroes damage more than just themselves when they warp reality
February 10, 2020
The age of celebrity is dead
The internet has killed the Hollywood star
January 31, 2020
The sad conformity of Taylor Swift
Where is the bravery in saying exactly what your industry wants you to say?
January 29, 2020
Land of hope and Victoria: The Kinks’ lost empire
Books and ArtsBy 1969, Churchill was dead and the Kinks, as an album group, were toast
January 28, 2020
Stalin at Yale
Art history for the age of identity politics
January 27, 2020
The Witcher’s hours
Books and ArtsMedieval gore for millennial gamers
January 25, 2020
Stayin’ alive in ’75
Books and ArtsMeryl Meisler’s photographs captured the family life and nightlife of Seventies New York
January 22, 2020
Style on steroids: the power of Jerry Bruckheimer
Books and ArtsBruckheimer may think that the Oedipus Complex is a Greek shopping mall, but the set-ups of Bad Boys and Top Gun are classical
January 21, 2020
Laurence Fox made me go into hiding
I called the FBI but so far they have not called me back
January 14, 2020
Stephen King and the warped morality of identity politics
Liberals as a whole still tend to believe that people (and the art they make) deserve to be judged individually and on their own merits
Vince Vaughn owes me a colon cleanse
Your foul and reckless actions have caused my intestines to spasm
January 13, 2020
The media horror at Joker’s Oscar nods is deeply predictable
It’s almost as though Hollywood itself has had enough of the protests, the lectures and the scolding
