history
Ravens: Spassky vs. Fischer, Hampstead Theatre review - it's game over for this chess playThursday, 05 December 2019
We’ve had Chess the musical; now, here’s Chess the play. Tom Morton-Smith, who has form wrestling recent history into dramatic form with the acclaimed Oppenheimer, turns his attention to the 1972 World Chess Championship in Reykjavík, in which... Read more... |
Henry VI, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse review - a lively vortexFriday, 22 November 2019
No Joan of Arc means no Henry VI Part One. France, where we left the victorious Henry V - the superb Sarah Amankwah, a shining light of this company - in the Globe's summer history plays, only figures briefly in the last act of a candelelit,... Read more... |
Meeting Gorbachev review - Werner Herzog offers a swansong tributeSaturday, 09 November 2019
You react differently to Meeting Gorbachev knowing that the film’s subject was on occasions brought to its interviews from hospital by ambulance; his interlocutor, Werner Herzog, doesn’t mention that fact, of course, anywhere in the three encounters... Read more... |
Thomas J Campanella: Brooklyn - The Once and Future City review - out of Manhattan's shadowSunday, 13 October 2019
For visitors to New York, it’s all about Manhattan, its 23 square miles of skyscraper-encrusted granite instantly familiar, its many landmarks – enshrined in movies and music – must-sees on the itinerary of first-time tourists. The other... Read more... |
Catherine the Great, Sky Atlantic review - a glorious role for Helen Mirren only gets betterFriday, 04 October 2019
“I want something Russian…” It’s with such a cry that Helen Mirren, bored by the bizarrely transgressive masked ball that comes at the close of the first episode of Catherine the Great, gets the dancing going: nothing from the imported fashions of... Read more... |
Spotlight on The Troubles: A Secret History, BBC Four review - Ulster's bitter sectarian war revisitedWednesday, 11 September 2019
“The Troubles” is a polite euphemism for the ferocious storm of sectarian violence and political chaos which convulsed Northern Ireland for 30 years, before being brought to a close by 1998’s Good Friday Agreement. Irish journalist Darragh MacIntyre... Read more... |
William Dalrymple: The Anarchy review – masterly history of the first rogue corporationSunday, 08 September 2019
Serious historians don’t much care for counter-factual speculations. Readers, however, often enjoy them. So here’s mine. In 1780, the seemingly invincible forces of the East India Company had suffered a crushing defeat at Pollilur, west of Madras.... Read more... |
Karl Marlantes: Deep River review - growing pains of a nation of immigrantsSunday, 25 August 2019
Karl Marlantes’s Deep River is an all-American novel. And why should it not be? Marlantes is an all-American author. He grew up in small-town Oregon, attended Yale (and Oxford), fought and was heavily awarded as a Marine in Vietnam, then settled... Read more... |
Prince Albert: A Victorian Hero Revealed, Channel 4 review - dramatic documentary filled with intelligent detailSaturday, 24 August 2019
It may sound perverse to say it, but Albert was the perfect twenty-first century prince. Thrust into the heart of the British monarchy he was simultaneously an oppressed outsider who – despite his reputation as the most handsome prince in Europe (... Read more... |
DVD: Are You Proud?Tuesday, 13 August 2019
Ashley Joiner’s expansive documentary Are You Proud? opens with the testament of a redoubtable nonagenarian remembering his experiences as a gay man in World War II. Though followed by the admission that he had to live his later life as a lie, it’s... Read more... |
Our Women on the Ground: Essays by Arab Women Reporting from the Arab World ed. Zahra Hankir review – journalism from the front linesSunday, 11 August 2019
Many of the women in this pioneering collection of essays have faced unimaginable hardship in their pursuit of truth – persecution by extremist groups as well as the loss of family members and friends. The tone of this collection is, however, best... Read more... |
Evita, Regent's Park Open Air Theatre review - a diva dictator for 2019Friday, 09 August 2019
Following a triumphant resurrection of Jesus Christ Superstar, now playing at the Barbican, the Park works its magic on another of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s Seventies rock operas. Jamie Lloyd’s stripped-down, super-sleek, contemporary take... Read more... |
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