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4 weeks ago | 
newstatesman.com | Zuzanna Lachendro |Michael Prodger |Kate Mossman |Zoe Huxford
“Call me Ishmael”, the opening line of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick,commands the reader. In her exciting feminist reimagining of the classic, the 2020 Goldsmith’s Prize shortlisted author Xiaolu Guo instructs the reader to call the narrator Ishmaelle. Guo’s plot follows a similar trajectory to the original. The cast is slightly changed; Captain Ahab becomes Captain Seneca and rather than sailing on the Pequod, Ishmaelle finds herself on the Nimrod.
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1 month ago | 
newstatesman.com | Michael Prodger |Zoe Huxford |Barney Horner
The curse of the subtitle of Christopher de Bellaigue’s study of the most powerful of all Ottoman sultans, Suleyman the Magnificent (1494-1566), was that the sultanate had no history of primogeniture. The demise of a sultan meant more than one death as his assorted male offspring jostled bloodily for position – brothers and half-brothers suddenly became rivals to be disposed of.
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2 months ago | 
newstatesman.com | Michael Prodger |Zoe Huxford |Megan Gibson
In 1988, Gilbert and George – provocateurs, living sculptures, two-in-one artists – told the Soho gallerist James Birch that they wanted to stage an exhibition in communist Moscow: “Art for all” was their supposed creed. Birch was about to take a Francis Bacon show to the Soviet Union and they knew him already from the Blitz nightclub. So started a curious series of events, deftly narrated here as an account of the last days of the USSR cast as a comedy of manners.
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Jan 22, 2025 | 
newstatesman.com | Michael Prodger |Zoe Huxford |Zuzanna Lachendro
People knew Eric Tucker as many things – boxer, steelworker, building labourer, habitué of working men’s clubs and bookmakers – but few knew this tall, unkempt, heavy-set man as a painter. Shortly before his death at 86 in 2018 he suggested to his brother that it might be nice to hold an exhibition of his work.
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Dec 30, 2024 | 
anothermag.com | Zoe Huxford
Lead Image 1. Ted Stansfield’s Profile of Mike FaistFrom a suit-wearing pre-schooler and “loose cannon” teen to a decade on Broadway and an appearance in Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story (the project he is most proud of), 32-year-old Mike Faist has run the gamut professionally as much as personally.
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Nov 27, 2024 | 
newstatesman.com | Zoe Huxford
Behind London’s King’s Cross Station on the Caledonian Road lies the Yellow Bittern, a restaurant-cum-bookshop that opened this autumn. It has just three members of staff – Hugh Corcoran, the chef and face of the venture, and his co-owners, Oisín Davies and Frances Armstrong-Jones – seats 18 people and is only open for lunch, Monday to Friday. It has no website and no social media presence.
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Nov 20, 2024 | 
newstatesman.com | Michael Prodger |Zuzanna Lachendro |Rachel Cunliffe |Zoe Huxford
“I was one continued shudder from the beginning to the end of the performance.” So said Abigail Adams in 1784 about the first mass-scale performance of Handel’s Messiah, written in 1741. Singers, players and audiences have continued to shudder ever since as the oratorio has become probably the most performed piece in the repertoire.
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Nov 8, 2024 | 
newstatesman.com | Zoe Huxford
Charlotte Day Wilson is in a confessional mood. “I nearly didn’t make it out tonight,” the Toronto-born R&B singer-songwriter discloses. “But I knew once I did, the energy would uplift me and I would feel so much better. I do, and I’m so glad we did.” As is the crowd who journeyed to O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire in west London on 31 October, for the European leg of her tour. Almost everything about the 31-year-old Wilson is understated.
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Nov 7, 2024 | 
newstatesman.com | Michael Prodger |George Monaghan |Zuzanna Lachendro |Zoe Huxford
A Short History of British Architecture: From Stonehenge to the Shard by Simon JenkinsIn Britain, says the journalist and architectural buff Simon Jenkins, buildings have always been a battleground, where styles have grappled one against one or in a free-for-all: classicism vs gothic vs baroque vs modernism. If building is about structure, then architecture, he says, is about “how we choose to clothe that structure with meaning or delight”.
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Oct 23, 2024 | 
newstatesman.com | Zoe Huxford
On 15 October, after a six-year hiatus, the US lingerie brand Victoria’s Secret (VS) resurrected its fashion show. In the 40-minute event, live-streamed from New York on Amazon, Kate Moss and a cast of ostensibly retired models slunk down a pared-back runway while Cher belted “Believe”. Hardly the pomp and pageantry of VS’s prime, it was more like a strangely muted fever dream.
