history
Dirt: The Filthy Reality of Everyday Life, Wellcome CollectionWednesday, 23 March 2011
Weeds, memorably, have been described as merely being plants that grow where we don’t want them. Walking through the Wellcome’s fine new exhibition, we can conclude that the “dirt”, too, is merely material appearing out of its appropriate... Read more... |
The EagleTuesday, 22 March 2011
A chorus of "Hooray! No CGI!" has greeted Kevin Macdonald's new film version of Rosemary Sutcliff's popular novel, The Eagle of the Ninth. Not for him a Gladiator-style digital Rome, or Troy-like computer-generated navies stretching away into... Read more... |
WOW – Women of the World, Southbank CentreMonday, 14 March 2011
Feminism is a dirty word. Ask anybody. Do they want to be tarred with the label? Do they, hell. The word still carries connotations of man-haters. Even today’s young women fighting against harassment in tube carriages, horrified by the easy... Read more... |
Civilization: Is the West History?, Channel 4Sunday, 06 March 2011
The two are not wildly far apart in their appreciation of the wonder of the West; indeed, Ferguson's accompanying book is subtitled The West and the Rest. Clark saw the peak of culture in the judiciously spent gold of the Medici, while Ferguson... Read more... |
South Riding, BBC OneMonday, 21 February 2011
You can see why the BBC's drama gurus wanted to have a go at remaking South Riding, which last came around in 1974's hit version from Yorkshire Television. It has drama, romance, social conflict, lofty ideals and looks a bit like a parable for our... Read more... |
Great White Silence with James Cracknell, DiscoveryMonday, 31 January 2011
For a while in the 1990s, the NASDAQ of polar exploration knocked Scott off his plinth and installed Shackleton as Britain’s favourite Antarctic hero. To a modern sensibility, survival seemed a more laudable pursuit than sacrifice. Better a live... Read more... |
The Tudors, BBC TwoSunday, 23 January 2011
It's a strange mixture, this Tudors malarkey. The opening episode of the fourth and supposedly final series spent an age spinning through the back story as if earnestly trying to educate us in the history of the bloodthirsty English ruling family.... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Cairo: Old Bones, New CoffinsSunday, 09 January 2011
The Egyptian Government is investing in the arts, which would normally be a cause for celebration. However, in building the National Museum of Egyptian Civilisation, it feels like the country’s cultural budget is being spent on another new display... Read more... |
Upstairs Downstairs, BBC OneMonday, 27 December 2010
Thirty-five years after Rose Buck took what she thought was her final nostalgic stroll through the empty rooms of 165 Eaton Place in Belgravia, where she had served the Bellamy family for four decades, Jean Marsh has brought Rose back home in the... Read more... |
Relics of Richard II, National Portrait GalleryThursday, 18 November 2010
The National Portrait Gallery is a national treasure. Not because it has nice pictures (although it does have that too), but because it has the most amazing archive. An archive that is, almost literally, a treasure trove. It is, of course, out of... Read more... |
High Society, Wellcome CollectionFriday, 12 November 2010
It’s amazing what you might have found in your average bathroom cabinet 100 years ago. For those niggling aches and pains, what could be more effective than a bottle of Bayer’s Heroin Hydrochloride? Or how about a soothing spoonful of Sydenham’s... Read more... |
The Pillars of the Earth, Channel 4Sunday, 24 October 2010
It’s taken 20 years for Ken Follett’s doorstopping saga to storm the little screen in the corner of the room. According to Rufus Sewell, playing a stonemason who knows about these things, it takes only 15 to knock up a spanking new Gothic cathedral... Read more... |
