1+ day, 2+ hour 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…...

4+ day, 19+ hour 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…...

3+ day, 16+ hour 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…...

2+ day, 46+ min 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…...

2+ day, 20+ hour 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....

3+ day, 19+ hour 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…...

4+ day, 19+ hour 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…...

4+ day, 15+ hour 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…...

4+ day, 23+ hour ago  (430+ words) The Spectator Hodder, pp. 288, "16. 99 The comic novelist Andrew Sean Greer won the Pulitzer Prize for Less, a chronicle of the longings and humiliations of modern life. But now, he suspects, we'd all like an escape. "Whatever happened to the charm…...

4+ day, 16+ hour ago  (538+ words) When Aston Villa won the Europa League recently, the focus was less on the football than on the Prince of Wales bawling "Sweet Caroline. And while images of Wills bouncing in his box and cheering his favourite team wouldnt seem…...