A Riddle Dissolved
Woyzeck on the Highveld (adapted from Woyzeck by Georg Büchner), Handspring Puppet Company, toured 6 September-12 November 2011 Woyzeck…
Between Imagination and Truth
The Casual Perfect, Lavinia Greenlaw, Faber and Faber, 64pp, £12.99 (hardback) There are poets in love with poetry as…
Forces To Be Reckoned With
The Storm House, Tim Liardet, Carcanet, 66pp, £9.95 (paperback) November, Sean O’Brien, Picador, 84pp, £8.99 (paperback) In his essay,…
Between Earth and Heaven
La Wally, Alfredo Catalani, Opera Holland Park, 31 July 2011 It began in 1888 with the thought of snow…
Building History
Ghost Milk: Calling Time on the Grand Project, Iain Sinclair, Hamish Hamilton, 432pp, £20 (hardback) Since being banned from…
Half a Mirror
Drawing in Ash, William Stone, Salt Publishing, 112pp, £9.99 (paperback) The Game of Bear, Peter Bennet, Flambard Press, 72pp,…
Has Houellebecq Lost La Haine?
The Map and the Territory, Michel Houellebecq (translated by Gavin Bowd), William Heinemann, 304pp, £17.99 (hardback) Michel Houellebecq’s personal…
Wild Life: Recent Books from Agenda Editions
Losers Keepers, Andrew McNeillie, £9 (paperback) The Untenanted Room, James Simpson (with woodcuts by Carolyn Trant), unpriced (paperback) A…
Amateur, Professional, Other: The Camden Fringe
Camden Fringe, various venues, August 2011 Just down the road the St. Pancras hotel sat like a monument to…
Italophilia
The Pursuit of Italy, David Gilmour, Allen Lane, 447pp, £25 (hardback) Italy is glory, art, music, poetry and a…
The Life of the City
Jerusalem: The Biography, Simon Sebag Montefiore, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 696pp, £25 (hardback) The striking cover of this book reproduces…
Dead Parrot
The Vorticists: Manifesto for a Modern World Tate Britain, 14 June – 4 September 2011 A question that must…
The Growth of a Poet’s Mind
The Horseman’s Word, Roger Garfitt, Jonathan Cape, 378pp, £18.99 (hardback) Carl Sandburg once described the past as ‘a bucket…
A Tale of Two Fairs
Art Antiques London, Kensington Gardens, 9 – 15 June 2011 Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, 7 June –…
Comic Modulations: Opera Holland Park 2011
L’Amico Fritz, Mascagni (21 June); Don Pasquale, Donizetti (22 June); The Marriage of Figaro, Mozart (4 July) and La…
Napoleon’s Teddy Bear
Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon: The Greatest Movie Never Made, Alison Castle (ed.), Taschen, 1112pp, £44.99 (hardback) When we were thirteen…
Terence Rattigan’s Theatre of the Unspoken
There is a distinctive Rattigan chord, audible in all his best plays, and present in the overtones of even his lightest farce
Among the Lost People
Train to Budapest, Dacia Maraini, Arcadia Books, 400pp, £11.99 (paperback) ‘To be a survivor it’s useful not to be…
No Hooting or Fuss
Peter Carpenter Bernard Spencer: Complete Poetry, edited by Peter Robinson, Bloodaxe Books, 384pp, £15 (paperback) In 1974, in an introduction…
At Your Own Perils: Shakespeare and Sir Thomas More
Sean Elliott Sir Thomas More, edited by John Jowett, Arden Shakespeare, 360pp, £16.99 (paperback) For the editors of the Arden…
Long Day’s Journey into Night
Terry Kelly Night, David Harsent, Faber and Faber, 112pp, £9.99 (paperback) David Harsent is the quintessential poet’s poet. An early…
‘Barbarous Goings On’ in 1930s Portugal
Pereira Maintains, Antonio Tabucchi, Canongate Books, 195pp, £14.99 (hardback) ‘It isn’t easy to do one’s best in a country like…
Singing the Body Electra
Erik Martiny One Secret Thing, Sharon Olds, Jonathan Cape, 96pp, £10 (paperback) The most recurrent criticism of Sharon Olds’s work…
An Echo from Iraq
When God Made Hell: The British Invasion of Mesopotamia and the Creation of Iraq, 1914-21, Charles Townshend, Faber and…