history
Best (and Worst) of 2015: TelevisionThursday, 31 December 2015
It's hard to disagree with Matthew Wright, in his brisk analysis of the shortcomings of British crime drama (see below). He notes how flashes of inspiration are smothered by skimpy budgets and the timidity of commissioning editors. The disastrous... Read more... |
Blood and Gold: The Making of Spain - Reconquest, BBC FourWednesday, 16 December 2015
The second instalment of this three-part series on the history of Spain (from the BBC in collaboration with the Open University) told a tale that is probably still relatively unfamiliar in the Anglophone world. That’s despite the fact that one of... Read more... |
The Last Kingdom, Series Finale, BBC TwoFriday, 11 December 2015
Though Alfred the Great was renowned for educational and social reforms as much as for whupping the Danes on the battlefield, I'd never pictured him the way David Dawson has been playing him in The Last Kingdom. Pallid and sickly-looking, and... Read more... |
DVD: Murder in the CathedralWednesday, 25 November 2015
The real achievement of this remarkable DVD release from the BFI is the fact that it brings the name of George Hoellering back to our attention as a director. His 1951 adaption of TS Eliot’s verse play Murder in the Cathedral has been virtually... Read more... |
High Spirits: The Comic Art of Thomas Rowlandson, The Queen’s GalleryFriday, 20 November 2015
“High Spirits” is a multi-layered title: the caricaturist Thomas Rowlandson (1757-1827) was himself a heavy gambler and a heavy drinker, continually using up his material assets in such pursuits. His high spirits extended to the Georgian society he... Read more... |
Thomas Tallis, Sam Wanamaker PlayhouseSunday, 08 November 2015
Jessica Swale’s Thomas Tallis is the first new play commissioned for the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse – the beginning, hopefully, of the same relationship the Globe itself has always had with new writing. In concept, it’s everything this unique space... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Writer Bernard CornwellWednesday, 21 October 2015
Bernard Cornwell's best-selling Sharpe series, set during the Napoleonic wars, transferred to television with huge success. This week, it’s the turn of his Saxon Stories to make the jump, as the BBC airs its lavish, eight-part drama The Last Kingdom... Read more... |
China: Treasures of the Jade Empire, Channel 4Monday, 19 October 2015
Here comes the President, and with him a timely reminder about what the Chinese have been digging up over the past 40 years or so to further demonstrate their exceptional imperial history over the past two millennia. Treasures of the Jade Empire... Read more... |
SuffragetteTuesday, 13 October 2015
Suffragette is exemplary in its attempt to depict the harrowing experiences of the British women who risked their lives to win the vote. It depicts the awakening of a reluctant recruit who becomes a militant, and graphically depicts the violence... Read more... |
Treasures of the Indus, BBC FourTuesday, 08 September 2015
The BBC India Season is bringing us a cluster of programmes amounting to a fascinatingly varied series of visits to the subcontinent. Incidentally, and not coincidentally, there is also an India Festival with myriad exhibitions, conferences and... Read more... |
Love and Betrayal in India: The White Mughal, BBC FourFriday, 04 September 2015
William Dalrymple has discovered a fascinating true romance from history in this story of the relationship of Indian-born British diplomat James Achilles Kirkpatrick and the Muslim princess Khair-un-Nissa in Hyderabad at the turn of the 19th century... Read more... |
Building the Ancient City: Athens, BBC TwoFriday, 21 August 2015
Heaven, or a lot of pagan gods at least, may know what was in the air 2500 years ago. Bettany Hughes has just finished her trilogy of philosophers from that millennium, and now we have Professor Andrew Wallace-Hadrill taking us genially around... Read more... |
