‘I was never Alfie,’ says Sir Michael Caine, despite having made his name playing the Swinging Sixties lover boy on screen. ‘I was always after girls, but I was a romantic. I was always in love with someone. So I wasn’t like that, I wasn’t after a sh**. It worked out very well.’ Caine looks … Read more
Leonardo: A Life In Drawing is a stunning exhibition, giving an extraordinary vision of one of the greatest minds of history By Philip Hensher for Event Published: 22:01 GMT, 1 June 2019 | Updated: 22:01 GMT, 1 June 2019 Leonardo: A Life In Drawing Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace … Read more
DEBORAH ROSS: Classy Keeley can’t save this stilted saga By Deborah Ross for Event magazine Published: 22:01 GMT, 1 June 2019 | Updated: 22:01 GMT, 1 June 2019 Summer Of Rockets Wednesday, BBC2 Rating: The Virtues Wednesday, Channel 4 Rating: Stephen Poliakoff’s latest drama, Summer Of Rockets, is its own worst enemy. Just when you … Read more
The new Naim Mu-So is BOOMING marvellous By Rob Waugh Event for The Mail on Sunday Published: 22:01 GMT, 1 June 2019 | Updated: 22:01 GMT, 1 June 2019 Naim Mu-So £1,300, naimaudio.com Rating: Wireless speakers used to be the weedy runts of the hi-fi family. Then Naim’s Mu-So came along. Looking like a metal … Read more
For just over a year, two of the greatest poets in the English language lived within a few miles of one another, in the Quantock Hills in Somerset. They were both bristling with energy. William Wordsworth, aged 27, had once walked 3,000 miles through France and Switzerland. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, three years his junior, thought … Read more
It was the largest seaborne invasion in the history of warfare – a battle fought on such an epic scale that it has spawned thousands of books, TV series and Hollywood movies. Although millions of words have been written about the events that unfolded on D-Day, June 6, 1944, almost all have come from the … Read more
So, finally, the Game is over. After eight series, 73 episodes and some 80 hours of some of the best television of all time, Game Of Thrones is at an end. Bran the Broken, the boy crippled in the very first episode, closed the series sitting on the much-coveted Iron Throne. Metaphorically, at least. The … Read more
My childhood was dominated by the Second World War. I was born ten years after it finished but every adult I knew had lived or fought through it, and every story book, comic and film seemed to be based upon it. The image of plucky, isolated Britain standing alone against the full might of the … Read more
BOOK OF THE WEEK Noble Savages : The Olivier Sisters — Four Lives in Seven Fragments by Sarah Watling (Cape £25, 416 pp) Margery — the mad one. Brynhild — the divorced one who died from cancer on her failing farm. Daphne — the Rudolf Steiner obsessive who founded a school. Noel — the doctor … Read more
NATURE ROCK POOL by Heather Buttivant (September £14.99, 288 pp) Barnacles live their entire lives cemented to a rock — so how do they reproduce? Answer: a barnacle has an enormously long penis. In fact, if we chaps were proportioned like barnacles, we would sport penises some 48 ft in length. Quite a thought. This … Read more
HISTORY Crabbgate by John Bevan (£12.99, submex.co.uk) Navy frogman Commander Lionel ‘Buster’ Crabb pictured in 1944 On the morning of Thursday, April 19, 1956, former Navy frogman Commander Lionel ‘Buster’ Crabb dived into the waters of Portsmouth Harbour. Working for MI6, his mission was to investigate the underwater workings of a Soviet warship which was … Read more
POPULAR By Wendy Holden for the Daily Mail Published: 22:04 GMT, 30 May 2019 | Updated: 22:04 GMT, 30 May 2019 THOSE WHO ARE LOVED by Victoria Hislop (Headline £20, 496 pp) THOSE WHO ARE LOVED by Victoria Hislop (Headline £20, 496 pp) In their small Athens apartment, the large Stavridis family squabble like any … Read more
CRIME By Geoffrey Wansell for the Daily Mail Published: 22:04 GMT, 30 May 2019 | Updated: 22:04 GMT, 30 May 2019 THIS STORM by James Ellroy (Heinemann £20, 608 pp) THIS STORM by James Ellroy (Heinemann £20, 608 pp) James Ellroy, once called ‘the American Dostoevsky’, is a great writer. His searing depictions of crime … Read more