4+ day, 7+ hour ago  (810+ words) The Spectator The highs and lows of life as an artist "Painting is a stupid job. Do something useful and train to be a nurse," commented a man beneath a column I wrote last month. Although well used to the…...

4+ day, 12+ hour ago  (287+ words) While most Fake Fuzz operatives are less aggressive than this, their condescending self-importance is all the more irritating for its stupidity. Retail parks often employ them, as do individual businesses. A shop in my town has an entry gate, about…...

1+ week, 2+ day ago  (701+ words) The Spectator The cringeworthy rebranding of Bristol's SS Great Britain If you live or work in Bristol, it's impossible to escape the Victorian engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel's shadow " but that won't stop some people from trying. The heritage site which…...

1+ week, 6+ day ago  (62+ words) Glyndebourne, until 9 July Selim's very tone exudes masculine sweat and onions It was set in a postwar Italian movie studio, with Pasquale as the over-mighty mogul and an amusingly choreographed chorus of paparazzi. "Nineteenth century not very sexy " update to…...

1+ week, 5+ day ago  (270+ words) Serpent's Tail, pp. 224, "16. 99 For more than half a century, M. John Harrison has been writing about decay and dispossession in a style that is at once restless and exacting. Often an audacious weaver of science fictions, he has also operated in…...

1+ week, 3+ day ago  (497+ words) I've always been keen on Kim Kardashian, going right back to the earliest years of her family reality show. At one point in an over-excited piece for the Sun, I even compared her to Helen of Troy "a modern day…...

1+ week, 4+ day ago  (162+ words) The common thread running through Thiel's life is a fascination with unusual experiments The New York Times explains the move by suggesting that Argentina is just one of Thiel's "back-up countries" as he hedges his bets against the United States....

1+ week, 5+ day ago  (803+ words) Although the past few footballing weeks have been dominated by the convulsive conclusion to Arsenal's season " and the upcoming few will be dominated by the World Cup " I wonder if some of you might spare a thought for my own…...

1+ week, 6+ day ago  (379+ words) At just over two hours, Martin Scorsese's 1991 remake of Cape Fear was 20 minutes longer than the 1962 original. It also added some moral complexity. Instead of a total psycho (Robert Mitchum) menacing a lawyer's very nice family, we got a total…...

1+ week, 6+ day ago  (329+ words) Casanova, who was from Venice, claimed in his Histoire de ma Vie to have slept with 122 women. A paltry sum. I beat him hands down, though to my shame cannot remember the names of most of them. Or even their…...