Though I have travelled in India often and extensively, I’ve not been since the economic liberalisation that has resulted in 71% of Indians having mobile phone subscriptions, as opposed to the 5% that had them ten years ago. This startling statistic comes from Sunil Khilnani’s programme essay for David Hare’s new National Theatre play, “Behind the Beautiful Forevers,” based on the book by … [Read more...]
Archives for 2014
Feminists have trouble keeping up with the Joneses
Fascinating Rhythm, 1982-3. Enamel on plywood. Allen Jones’s work is evidently too difficult for some people who call themselves “feminists” to understand. In 1986 a posse of deranged women (or a single loonie) attacked his 1969 “Chair” with paint stripper or acid (Google-accessed accounts vary); and his work was pointedly excluded from Penelope Curtis’ 2011 Tate Britain survey of “Modern … [Read more...]
Remembering Tony Staniland
Tony Staniland was one of those hard-to-categorise, larger-than-life people who was a hero to those whose lives he changed, but who was modest about his own ambitions, and seems to have worked so hard simply because it gave him pleasure. A physically big man, well over six feet tall, this philoprogenitive educator had six children, eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren by three … [Read more...]
Why you should give a fig
An invitation to a lecture about the “cultural” part of agriculture, reminded me how rarely we think about food and culture. Joining the usually* delightful set of foodie monographs called “The Edible Series” published by Reaktion is a volume called Figs: A Global History by my friend and colleague, David C. Sutton, Director of Research Projects at Reading University. Its tone is odd and amusing – … [Read more...]
Rembrandt Late Style: the Greatest Show on Earth?
Self Portrait at the Age of 63 (1669) The National Gallery London “Rembrandt the Late Works” at the National Gallery until 18 January (and at the Rijksmuseum from 12 February - 17 May 2015) is one of the great exhibitions of our lifetime. The NG must have called in every favour it was owed to have borrowed some of the finest paintings and works on paper of Rembrandt’s last years – the selection … [Read more...]
A Great Winter’s Journey at Oxford
Ian Bostridge This week I was present at the finest performance of Schubert’s song cycle, Winterreise, I have ever seen or heard. I am unable to review it properly, because I know both the performers. I have a profound and historic foodie connection with the tenor, Ian Bostridge, and the pianist, Thomas Adès, first signed our farmhouse guestbook in 1978, aged seven. The recital at the … [Read more...]
King Henrietta IV?
Dame Harriet Walter as King Henry IV by Helen Maybanks The idea of an all-woman Henry IV (now playing at the Donmar Warehouse Theatre, London) didn’t much grab me. I gave a miss to the same company’s Julius Caesar and have to confess that I didn’t bother to read the reviews, even when it transferred to New York. But then the press night invitation for Henry IV arrived, and I had a … [Read more...]
Remembering Sally Morphet
My friend Sally Morphet was an immensely accomplished diplomat and academic; but those who also knew her in the company of her husband, Richard, former Keeper of the Modern Collection at the Tate Gallery and Bloomsbury enthusiast, could not fail to notice her arresting resemblance to the tall, slender and beautiful Virginia Woolf. Sally died last April, and though there was an obituary fairly … [Read more...]
Richard Jones’ gold mine for ENO
photograph by Robert Workman for ENO It wasn’t the best introduction. I have an awkward feeling that I first saw La fanciulla del West with Dame Gwyneth Jones singing Minnie, sometime in the late 1980s, when she was approaching 50, and her vibrato was so widely spaced you could drive a London bus through the gaps. So it isn’t a piece I was disposed to regard with a great deal of seriousness. I … [Read more...]
Elektricity at the Old Vic
Incest, jealousy, betrayal, murder, and cannibalism are in Elektra’s genes. The poor woman is descended from the House of Atreus, and these are just a few of the negative features of the lives and deaths of her ancestors. She makes an appearance in Aeschylus’ Oresteia trilogy and gets plays all to herself in Euripides and Sophocles. Sophocles’ Elektra, like all Aristotelian Greek tragedies, … [Read more...]