fri 11/07/2025

royalty

Ivona, Princess of Burgundia, Network Theatre

Bjorn Drori Avraham's Ivona, whose ugliness and silence disturb a dissipated court

I suspect there is a different production waiting to be unveiled for Witold Gombrowicz’s 1938 black comedy Ivona, Princess of Burgundia. Under the arches at Waterloo, tucked beside the station down a dark and dank service road is the Network...

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The King's Speech

"Only project!" That's not quite what EM Forster famously wrote, but it serves as the leitmotif of The King's Speech, as ripe a piece of Oscar bait as you are likely to see this year. Neither as visceral as The Fighter nor as resonantly and fully...

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Relics of Richard II, National Portrait Gallery

Box containing relics from the tomb of Richard II

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...

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The Genius of British Art, David Starkey, Channel 4

Forgetting the rest of art history, David Starkey cunningly tries to convince us that the Tudors invented the portrait

“Henry VIII is the only king whose shape we remember,” David Starkey tells us in the first of a new series of “polemical essays” on British art. To demonstrate, he reduces the king’s form to its bare Cubist geometry. He sketches a trapezoid for the...

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Art Gallery: Fourth Plinth Commission

Katharina Fritsch's 'Hahn/ Cock': one of six contenders in a playful, enticing shortlist for the Fourth Plinth

A playful, subversive mood dominates the shortlist for Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth. Most of the six proposals, in what is a very strong shortlist, play on notions of British identity, probing themes of heroism, heritage and conquest. The models...

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Royal Wedding, BBC Two

Where were you? For those of us too young to experience Kennedy’s assassination, which realistically is anyone under the age of 55, the Royal Wedding is the next event along the chain of history that simultaneously impinged on much of the globe’s...

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The Seckerson Tapes: Sarah Connolly Interview

Acclaimed British mezzo Sarah Connolly prepares for the title role in Donizetti's battle royal of rival queens Maria Stuarda. Her return to Opera North in the bel cantorole of her choice will be one of the highlights of the UK opera season and in...

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Girls on the Frontline, BBC Three/ News at Ten, BBC One

Let’s be honest, you never expect much sense from BBC Three. You don’t count on it for, say, depth of perspective. The channel which each week spews fresh torrents of hectic DayGlo entertainment in the specific direction of a desensitised...

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Birmingham Royal Ballet 1990-2010, Birmingham Hippodrome

What should a choreographer set before a Prince for a Royal Gala performance when his finest hour is a portrayal of Royal buggery with a hot poker? Well, possibly (sotto voce) clogdancing cobblers and pegleg pirates might be found more suitable, and...

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Royals at Birmingham Royal Ballet

Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall will attend Birmingham Royal Ballet’s 20th anniversary gala tomorrow night celebrating two decades in Birmingham for the company which was once Sadler’s Wells Theatre Ballet. The Prince of Wales is...

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Princes William and Harry Portrait, National Portrait Gallery

The latest official royal portrait, and the first painted portrait featuring the Princes William and Harry, hangs in a small room at the National Portrait Gallery among a selection of royal portraits of the Windsors. There’s the rather quirky one of...

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Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake, Sadler's Wells

For a choreographer the moment your work becomes a classic is when the audience tells you that you’re casting it wrong. I’ve seen Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake more than a dozen times for professional reasons since it first took off from Sadler’s Wells...

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