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Adam Sweeting
Wednesday, 08 July 2020
The notion of massed aircraft dogfighting over southern England seems inconceivable now, but the Battle of Britain in the summer of 1940 was all too horribly real for its...
Barney Harsent
Wednesday, 08 July 2020
Shoegaze stable Sonic Cathedral has, in truth, always been a much broader church than its name implies. From the psychedelic, sunshine pop of Gulp, to the blistering art noise of...
Peter Culshaw
Tuesday, 07 July 2020
Ennio Morricone was a genius, or as close to that description as makes no odds. If we mean someone who created a unique body of work, one that changed culture, had a distincive...
Peter Quantrill
Tuesday, 07 July 2020
Documentaries like this one make me sentimental for a time, until about 25 years ago, when classical music was a more or less weekly presence on terrestrial TV. Now fast...
Steven Isserlis
Tuesday, 07 July 2020
So Ida has left us – a legend has departed. What a violinist! What a woman! Magnificent, unique, incorrigible – she was a law unto herself.First, the playing: a film about her was...
Daniel Lewis
Tuesday, 07 July 2020
You feel at times, while reading the collection Blue in Chicago, that Bette Howland might have missed her vocation. In another life, Howland – until recently almost completely...
Graham Rickson
Tuesday, 07 July 2020
Yasujirō Ozu’s The Flavour of Green Tea Over Rice and Tokyo Story were released in 1952 and 1953 respectively. Tokyo Story...
Adam Sweeting
Monday, 06 July 2020
The spoof “rockumentary” always sounds like a great idea, but it’s hard to pull off. Largely this is because rock stars are...
Liz Thomson
Monday, 06 July 2020
After Unfollow the Rules: The Paramour Session and the #Quarantunes “robe recitals” comes the album: Unfollow the Rules, no...
Markie Robson-Scott
Sunday, 05 July 2020
The journalistic addiction-memoir is a crowded genre these days: Details editor Dan Perez chronicles his massive intake of...
Charlie Stone
Sunday, 05 July 2020
Edgar Degas is famous for his depictions of ballet dancers. His drawings, paintings and sculptures of young girls clad in...
Kieron Tyler
Sunday, 05 July 2020
“Strange Destinies” is the first track. “Take your eyes off me Svengali” is its memorable opening phrase. Conjuring up Van...
Veronica Lee
Saturday, 04 July 2020
It was a weary and frustrated Dom Joly (★★) who left the stage after performing the first drive-in comedy show in the UK....
Demetrios Matheou
Saturday, 04 July 2020
If COVID-19 isn’t the only topic being tackled by creative folk at the moment, it certainly feels like it. That’s perfectly...
Peter Culshaw
Saturday, 04 July 2020
Peter Culshaw’s occasional global radio music show comes blinking into the light after lockdown, as MusicBox radio’s studio...
Dancing at Dusk: A Moment with Pina Bausch’s 'The Rite of Spring' review - an explosive African rite
Jenny Gilbert
Saturday, 04 July 2020
There’s sun and sand, and both are golden – but this is no holiday beach. Distantly, out of focus, you can make out a man...
Graham Rickson
Saturday, 04 July 2020
Holst: The Planets; Nielsen: Helios Overture Mythos (Bjarke Mogensen and Rasmus Schjaerff Kjøller, accordions) (Mythos...
David Thompson
Saturday, 04 July 2020
Mike Hodges arrived in cinema through television, including a stint on the rightly revered Granada Television current...
Russ Coffey
Saturday, 04 July 2020
If one song best captures the overall mood of XOXO, it's the Beatles-meets-country strains of "Living in a Bubble". The...
disc of the day
Album: bdrmm - Bedroom
The shoegaze five-piece's journey of discovery ends with a hugely impressive debut
tv
The Battle of Britain, Channel 5 review - 80th anniversary of the RAF's finest hour
Behind the scenes of the air war that saved the nation
Being Beethoven, BBC Four review – from grubby kid to grumpy genius
Attention-span anxiety yields more insight into man than music
The Kemps: All True, BBC Two review - more self-promotion than self-mockery
Spandau Ballet-boys show willing but spoof rock-doc misses the point
film
Ennio Morricone 1928-2020: A lost afternoon in his apartment in Rome
Recalling a 2003 meeting with the 'Mozart of film music'
Homemade review - laughs, loss and madness in lockdown
Netflix showcases a collection of 17 short films that capture the isolated, but shared experiences of life during the pandemic
new music
Album: bdrmm - Bedroom
The shoegaze five-piece's journey of discovery ends with a hugely impressive debut
Ennio Morricone 1928-2020: A lost afternoon in his apartment in Rome
Recalling a 2003 meeting with the 'Mozart of film music'
Album: Rufus Wainwright - Unfollow the Rules
A self-described second act by an artist who's already been through several
classical
'She spoke through her violin': Steven Isserlis on extraordinary meetings with Ida Haendel (192?-2020)
One great and characterful instrumentalist remembered by another
Classical CDs Weekly: Holst, Nielsen, Piatti, Tchaikovsky
An accordion duo, operatic arias on solo cello and a fiery Russian symphony
‘We are still standing and planning for the brightest future we can’: Svend McEwan-Brown on the survival of a festival
East Neuk Festival Director finds generosity, humanity and a hunger for culture in a crisis
opera
Classical music/Opera direct to home 19 – and two before a live audience
Finally, you can be in the room, or space, where it happens in two east London venues
The Opera Story: Episodes review - whimsical takes on lockdown life
Young London company offers snapshots of contemporary living
Classical music/Opera direct to home 17 - festive inventions
Celebrating a maverick conductor, two great artists in recital and home-grown ingenuity
theatre
Les Blancs, National Theatre at Home review – triumphant revival of forgotten classic
NT archive recording of Lorraine Hansberry’s last play is absolutely compelling
Toast, Lawrence Batley Theatre online review - pungent adaptation of Nigel Slater's autobiography
Food crimes of the Sixties and Seventies are revealed here as Michelin-starred memories
Theatre Lockdown Special 12: An American rarity, a British savoury, and fresh Apples
Nigel Slater is back, as is Richard Nelson's Apple family for a second time via Zoom
dance
Dancing at Dusk: A Moment with Pina Bausch’s 'The Rite of Spring' review - an explosive African rite
Continents collide in a film documenting an inspired re-staging of a 20th-century masterpiece
'If they had been any closer my face would have misted up': filming 'Men at the Barre'
The director Richard Macer had exclusive access to the male stars of the Royal Ballet. He describes what he discovered
The Thread, Sadler's Wells Digital Stage review - Greek folk and contemporary unite
Russell Maliphant breathes fresh life into Hellenic tradition
comedy
Dom Joly / Daniel Sloss, Brent Cross reviews - UK's first drive-in comedy shows
The Drive-In Club makes a little bit of history
Desiree Burch, Soho Theatre On Demand review - fantastical storytelling
California comic on Burning Man, sex, race – and LSD
gaming
Rage 2 review – garish but great post-apocalyptic shooter
Challenge The Authority in this 'Mad Max on mushrooms' renegade romp
World War Z review - bloodthirsty fun with the zombie apocalypse
Chainsawing the brain-eaters as you battle against the tide of the undead
The Lego Movie 2 Videogame review - everything is not awesome
Few fresh ideas means this movie adaptation treads the same old ground
visual arts
Visual Arts Lockdown Special 4: half-way houses
Some galleries prepare to reopen, others remain closed; online still offers riches
Celia Paul: My Studio, Victoria Miro review - sublime isolation
One of the great painters of our time responds to life in lockdown
Shirley Baker: A Different Age, James Hyman Gallery review - the old at leisure
A little-known photographer and an overlooked subject take the spotlight
latest comments
Re Ms Lloyds' crooning v bepop: to add to the...
It’s fascinating to me that you have just used...
This performance is foretelling of Black Lives...
Just caught up with the Capture. The one thing...
Dear Tom, I was wondering if you know whether...
Paul, I just want to say I am a big fan of your...
Its very interesting
'..for a 79-year-old artist to produce a work of...