Culture & History
I write regularly about cultural issues in the British press, including drawing on my work as a historian to provide context for contemporary debate.
I can be irrepressible when talking history: I recently enjoyed explaining the relative sexual virtues of Elizabeth I on Channel 5’s ‘Last Days of Mary Queen of Scots’, and leading a historians’ live-tweet of historical context for the BBC’s Wolf Hall. You’ll also find some of my book reviews, lighter pieces and broader arts writing on this page.
The National Theatre – 50 years (and more) in The Spectator
written for the “From Our Archives” section, at The Spectator, 2 November 2013 Today the National Theatre hosts a gala performance, screened on BBC2 at 9pm, to celebrate fifty years since its launch as a company in 1963. You can view the full programme here – I’d wanted to be cynical about a...
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The pressures, perils and peculiarities of holiday reading
written for Conservative Home, 15 August 2013 Every August, I go on holiday to the whaling island of Nantucket, and I fail to finish Moby-Dick. It’s not that I don’t find Herman Melville’s tale of a whale a gripping read. As I tell people when I need to prove I’ve read it, it’s a much lighter,...
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Surveillance states needn’t make us paranoid
written for Conservative Home, 20 June 2013 It’s been a long day in the office for London’s most-hated politician. The French ambassador’s in a fury: it’s just come out that Her Majesty’s Secret Service used a key diplomatic summit the previous year to intercept all communications between his...
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Ground Zero
On artistic responses to September 11. Published in two parts at The Spectator: on 10 October 2011 and 11 October 2011 There’s a moment in Rupert Goold’s latest production, Decade, in which a gaunt widow (Charlotte Randle) stares up and into the empty space just left of where the North Tower used...
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A Magic Flute, Peter Brook
reviewed for The Spectator,30 March 2011 A new opera has breezed through London’s Barbican Centre. It’s a tale of arduous quests, initiation and male friendship, lyrical in its romantic sweetness, and vaguely reminiscent of the later Mozart. But Mozart’s The Magic Flute it most certainly is...
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Getting the Arts into Shape
written for The Spectator 9 February 2011 From 18th Century Shakespearian pretenders to the new establishment, if you find yourself looking for an artistic respite from sports overload at the Olympic Games, there will be few more exciting places to be in 2012 than Shakespeare’s Globe. In the spirit of...
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