Review at a glance S he didn’t get on the plane! The second series of Starstruck – the six-part BBC Three drama, co-written and starring the brilliant New Zealand comic Rose Matafeo – begins moments after the first one ended, with Jessie (Matafeo) having decided not to get on aContinue Reading
Review at a glance T he battle of the sexes is fraught at the best of times – and no one had a keener sense of its absurdities and tragedies than Pina Bausch. Her work, from the seminal Café Müller to the mesmeric The Rite of Spring, is packed withContinue Reading
Review at a glance E ight months have passed since Wet Leg released the unofficial national anthem of 2021, Chaise Longue, an irresistible punk-pop blast of saucy innuendo, deadpan humour and seaside-postcard surrealism. But judging by the rapturous reception that greeted the Isle of Wight band at this rammed LondonContinue Reading
Review at a glance W hen a revered artist dies as young as Bob Marley did, at just 36, the desire to learn more about them often outweighs what’s actually left behind. The music, of course, will live forever, but limited memorabilia, photographs and trinkets are pored over meticulously untilContinue Reading
A collection of poetry inspired by years teaching in a London school has won the Costa Book Awards. Hannah Lowe, who taught at City and Islington College for a decade, won for her book The Kids. The book is a series of sonnets about her time in the classroom asContinue Reading
I first saw Louise Bourgeois’s work in 1995 in an exhibition at Tate Britain (then just ‘Tate’) called Rites of Passage: Art for the End of the Century, curated by Stuart Morgan. I didn’t know him then, but after that I became very good friends with Stuart, and he alwaysContinue Reading
N ineties chart star Betty Boo has revealed how lockdown inspired her pop music comeback. The singer, real name Alison Clarkson, scored massive hits with Doin’ The Do and Where Are You Baby before quitting performing to make documentaries and write songs for other acts including Girls Aloud and Hear’Say,Continue Reading
2022 is the 40th anniversary of the Falklands War. 40 years ago Royal Navy, Royal Marines and Army units were deployed at pace from Devonport and Plymouth as part of British efforts to liberate the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic. Plymouth-based units were involved in some of the fiercest fightingContinue Reading
Review at a glance T he annual exhibition at Two Temple Place is intended to highlight collections across the UK. It can be exactly what you expect from this almost hallucinatory neo-Gothic mansion – there was an exhibition of the 19th-century critic John Ruskin a couple of years ago. ButContinue Reading
A US school district has voted to ban a Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust due to “inappropriate language” and an illustration of a nude woman, according to minutes from a board meeting. McMinn County School Board in Tennessee decided on January 10 to remove Maus from its curriculum,Continue Reading
