history
Versailles, BBC TwoThursday, 09 June 2016
In the middle of the last century the worst thing that could be said about a working-class housewife was that she had “run off with a black man”. Well, the Queen of France, no better than she ought to be, has had it off with a black man (in fact her... Read more... |
Found, The Foundling MuseumFriday, 03 June 2016
Cornelia Parker invited over 60 fellow artists to join her in exhibiting at the Foundling Museum in London. Titled Found, the show spills out from the basement gallery to infiltrate every room in the building and remind us that, when the Foundling... Read more... |
The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses - Henry VI Part 1, BBC TwoSunday, 08 May 2016
Allegedly one of the worst plays Shakespeare wrote (which he may have done in cahoots with Thomas Nashe), the first part of Henry VI emerged victorious from this TV adaptation. Whereas one might think twice about chopping and rejigging Hamlet or... Read more... |
Mary Beard's Ultimate Rome: Empire without Limit, BBC TwoThursday, 28 April 2016
The world of antiquity, from Greece to Rome, is both so familiar and so unknown. So it was more than welcome when the immensely knowledgable Professor Mary Beard – the role of the academic, she announced, is to make everything less simple –... Read more... |
The Sugar-Coated Bullets of the Bourgeoisie, Arcola TheatreSunday, 17 April 2016
The playwright Anders Lustgarten has spent a considerable chunk of his life reading and writing and thinking about China, and clearly wants to set a few points straight. Tired of the persistent Western view of that country and its people as... Read more... |
The ClubSaturday, 26 March 2016
The Chilean director Pablo Larrain completed his loose trilogy about his country confronting the legacy of its Pinochet years four years ago with No. Striking a distinctly upbeat note after the two films that had preceded it, Tony Romero and Post... Read more... |
Churchill's Secret, ITVMonday, 29 February 2016
When it comes to losing power, and powers failing, Michael Gambon has once again proved himself the ruler of choice. The actor who gave us his Lear when he was only just hitting his forties has had three decades of gurning and grouching to ready... Read more... |
Vogue 100, National Portrait GalleryMonday, 15 February 2016
When it got too hard to ship the original American edition across the Atlantic during the Great War, British Vogue appeared as a sister publication in the Condé Nast empire. The first issue in September 1916 announced in its editorial: “The time has... Read more... |
TrumboSaturday, 06 February 2016
Trumbo depicts the 13-year struggle by the screenwriter Dalton Trumbo (Bryan Cranston) to break the blacklist imposed on him and the other members of the Hollywood Ten in 1947. By continuing to get his scripts produced throughout the Fifties, Trumbo... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Filmmaker Hou Hsiao-hsienSunday, 24 January 2016
The mesmerising martial arts drama The Assassin consolidates the reputation of the Taiwanese filmmaker Hou Hsiao-hsien as one of world cinema’s pre-eminent artists. Every film he has made since the emergence of his mature aesthetic – grounded... Read more... |
The Story of China, BBC TwoFriday, 22 January 2016
China’s tumultuous recent past attempted to selectively obliterate the history of one of the world’s great and ancient civilisations, with the neatly complementary result in the past several decades of a huge upsurge in Chinese studies, East and... Read more... |
Elizabeth, Royal BalletSunday, 10 January 2016
Please, sir, I want some more. Will Tuckett and Alasdair Middleton's Elizabeth is soul food for the hungry dance fan; an ingenious blend of words, music and dance that beguiles and entertains in equal measure. The shame is that it will be seen by so... Read more... |
