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Royal Festival Hall, London CBSO Centre, Birmingham Mind-blowing is one of those expressions best allowed out every five years at most. This quinquennial airing greets the UK premiere of Alfred Schnittke's extraordinary The...
What occurred when President Obama met 'Nessa', the first lady of Barry Island? Carole Cadwalladr gets the answer, and much more, from the creators of Gavin & Stacey as the well-loved series return for a third run How lovely it...
Derek Paravicini was born extremely prematurely. "I'm terribly sorry, you've had a miscarriage," the doctor told his mum. Then, his sister recalled, "my mother heard this noise". Oxygen therapy left the baby blind and...
He is notoriously secretive about his love life and for decades kept the world guessing over even his sexuality. So it is perhaps unsurprising that news of the death of Alan Bennett's only female lover has not reached the wider...
WH Auden, the Oxford oracle, is peeing into his washbasin. He's waiting for a rent boy to arrive in his college rooms; he's stuck over his stanzas; he looks not so much like a bag person as a crumpled plastic bag. A floor above...
On Monday we went to the National Theatre to see Alan Bennett's new play, The Habit of Art, about a fictional meeting between WH Auden and Benjamin Britten. It was the performance before press night, so there had been no...
C4 documentary drama to portray the monarch in key moments since the 1950s Playing the Queen brought Helen Mirren international fame and enough awards to fill a trophy room. Now five more British actors are taking on the role...
Abelard Abelard was a brilliant early-medieval theologian and rhetorician who agreed to take on Héloïse as a pupil. The two began an affair, and when it was discovered, she was sent to a nunnery and he was castrated. The story...
The other morning, I was waiting in the concourse at London King's Cross – wondering why all mainline stations nowadays have to smell of Cornish pasties – when a hugely tall, long-legged Buddhist monk sat down on the bench...
It is the season of lists. Best of the Year/ Decade. Worst of the Year/ Decade. Most Beautiful of the Year/Decade. I'd like to introduce a "Mildly Enjoyable Night Out But Nothing To Write Home About of The Year/Decade", because...
