James Bond: Trash or Art?

Indulge me in a little exercise. Open a new tab on your browser, enter Amazon.co.uk and type ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’ into the search …

The Hollow Crown @ The BBC

Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more. Only this time bring us proper screen stars. Poirot; The Pope; Loki; that lawyer lass off …

‘Appy birfday, Mister Dikkins!

What to write? He said it all, literally. As we celebrate Dickens’s 200th birthday, this is definitely the year to go back and remember why …

The multiplex addict’s guide to slightly braver cinema

It’s that time of year when we start to feel the good film itch. Despite the odd much-hyped festival import summer has never been a great …

Radio matters

It’s a wonderful scene.

A pillared and statued monument to 1920s Britishness presides over the theatreland bustle of Aldwych, scarred from wartime bombing but …

The Great Gatsby

Reading a really famous book for the first time is a strange experience.

It has taken me twenty-eight years to get to The Great …

The perfect parting shot

It is occurring somewhere in the world right now. In bedrooms and corridors, parks and cars, kitchens and meeting rooms, our maws give it birth. …

And I don’t mention Ikea once

Boys had all the fun. I didn’t understand why they got to eat more, and talk louder, and be left alone. In my fantasies I …

Costume drama

A set of armour, a pair of red shoes, a charcoal dressing-gown: my cultural week has been spent crouched inside a wardrobe, hangers clacking with …

Box set one-upmanship

This box set one-uppery has got to stop.

Status anxiety has a new best friend in the water cooler battleground of must-watch TV. Bad …

Being There

Some lines of poetry just refuse to give up their juju. However over-quoted they are, however often rid of context and subtlety, however relentlessly pushed …

Giving in to Paris

What is it about Paris? Having spent half of last year schlepping back and forth from St Pancras to visit my errant swain, I found …

Anthropomorphobia

As the venerable Master Cocker once put it, here comes the fear again. Spiders? Smashing. Gore? Gimme more. 13 for supper? Triskaidekaphobia schmobia, and …

The domestic goddess

Oh God. Here it comes. My ovaries’re palpitating, mine X chromosomes doth caper, and I’ve started wearing outfits reminiscent of Betty Draper.

For eleven …

Merlin

Geoff of Monmouth? Loudmouth. Chretien de Troyes? Cretin. Malory? Meh.

For years I have quested through the misty verbal thickets of our eminent Arthurian authorities, …