| | | The best drive-through cinemas in the UK this summer | | by Steve Rose May 31, 2021 | | From Manchester’s Secret City to Glasgow’s Prestwick Airport, the silver screen takes a trip to the great outdoors Between the travel restrictions, social distancing, badly ventilated spaces indoors and weather outdoors, we are not exactly shaping up for a great British summer. The silver lining you seek could be the silver screen. Drive-in and outdoor cinemas are looking like the best of several worlds: you’re getting out of the house but not necessarily out of your car, you’re together with other people yet reassuringly separate. At the movies you can go anywhere you want, from Edwardian Britain to Wakanda – for less than the price of a PCR swab test. Related: The Guide: Staying In – sign up for our home entertainment tips Continue reading... | | | | | The Plague Year: America in the Time of Covid review – a devastating analysis | | by Andrew Anthony May 31, 2021 | | Lawrence Wright’s deep research reveals the oversights and errors that fatally hampered the US reponse to Covid It has become an embarrassingly well known fact that in the 2019 Global Health Security Index, the US was ranked No 1 in the world for preparedness for a pandemic (the UK, almost as embarrassingly, was No 2). Exactly how the US became the worst affected country in the world – more than 590,000 Americans have so far died from Covid – is now the subject of much finger-pointing debate. Recently, Michael Lewis’s Premonition looked at a group of people in public health in the US who warned of what was coming but were ignored. Lawrence Wright, who is a master of knitting together complex narratives, takes a much broader view of the proceedings in The Plague Year. Continue reading... | | | | | Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason review – inspired storytelling | | by Julie Myerson May 31, 2021 | | An unnamed mental illness thwarts one woman’s stab at a happy marriage in a devastating and sharply funny love story Martha is 40 and finally married to Patrick, a man who’s been secretly in love with her ever since teenagerhood. She now loves him back, but seems unable to be happy or even, on occasion, very nice to him. Ever since a “little bomb” exploded in her brain at the age of 17, she’s been on and off antidepressants, generally to little avail. Ultimately, when gentle, patient Patrick can take it no longer and walks out, Martha returns to her parents’ bohemian (AKA dysfunctional) family home in London’s Goldhawk Road and is forced to examine herself more closely. Is it simply, as she’s always felt, that she finds it “harder to be alive than most people”? Or is there some more devastating explanation – or diagnosis – which has been evading her all this time? This is a novel about mental illness but, thanks to Mason’s astute, even inspired handling of the subject (of which more to follow) it succeeds in covering a great deal more ground besides. First, it’s a sharply entertaining – if not especially original – comedy of the maladjusted English middle class. Martha’s bittersweet relationship with her alternately protective and exasperated sister is fondly reminiscent of Fleabag. And there’s something recognisably, nostalgically old fashioned about this London of organic supermarkets, Belgravia Christmases, Southwark penthouses and privileged girls who work at small publishing houses specialising in “war histories written by the man who owned it” and are sent home at lunchtime because there isn’t enough to do. Continue reading... | | | | | Noel Fielding and Cheryl Tweedy bring phone-hacking claims against Mirror owner | | by Jim Waterson Media editor May 31, 2021 | | Court cases continue 15 years after scandal broke, with total costs expected to reach £1bn The Great British Bake Off host Noel Fielding, former Girls Aloud member Cheryl Tweedy, and singer Natalie Imbruglia are among the latest individuals to bring phone-hacking claims against the publisher of the Mirror, as companies continue to deal with the costly fallout of widespread illegal behaviour at their newspapers. Fifteen years after the phone-hacking scandal began, more than 20 individuals have recently filed legal proceedings against the owner of the Mirror, with more cases waiting in the wings. Continue reading... | | | | | | | Judge these books: The Secret Barrister on the best books about law | | by The Secret Barrister May 31, 2021 | | From Kafka’s The Trial to insightful accounts from barristers on their time in the courts, here are some outstanding titles to explain the legal system No lawyer has a comprehensive knowledge of the labyrinthine law of our land, so quite how a member of the public is expected to understand all of the rules that bind us has long been a mystery to me. Nevertheless, even if the precise letter of the law will always be held captive by the legal profession, there are a number of fantastic books to help the general reader discern the law’s spirit. The book that has earned the right to sit atop any list of legal books is The Rule of Law by Tom Bingham, the former lord chief justice. It explores a principle that underpins not merely the legal system, but the edifice of our democracy. Offering a definition of the principle as “all persons and authorities within the state, whether public or private, should be bound by and entitled to the benefit of laws publicly made, taking effect (generally) in the future and publicly administered in the courts”, Bingham charts with absolute clarity the historical development of the rule of law, how it works in practice and, most importantly, why it matters. Continue reading... | | | | | Is that a surrealist masterpiece by the draining board? Inside Leonora Carrington's sculpture-filled home | | by Joanna Moorhead May 31, 2021 | | The great British artist’s home in Mexico has been turned into a wonderful museum, full of her sculptures, books, diaries and unsmoked cigarettes. Our writer, Carrington’s cousin, takes an emotional tour In October 2010, a few months before her death, I said my last goodbye to my cousin Leonora Carrington. As I left her home in Mexico City, she stood waving on the doorstep. Today, I’m back for the first time – to see Leonora’s house recreated as a visitor attraction. It feels surreal, but the surreal has become the everyday since I set off to find Leonora in 2006, almost 70 years after she checked out of our family and Britain. She travelled first to Paris to be with her lover, the German artist Max Ernst, before moving on to Mexico with a diplomat she met after she and Ernst were separated by the second world war. This house, 194 Calle Chihuahua, is where she was anchored for more than 60 years. Here, she painted some of her best-known works, including The Juggler, which sold at auction in 2005 for £436,000; And Then We Saw the Daughter of the Minotaur, now at MoMA in New York; and her mural The Magical World of the Mayans, now at the National Anthropological Museum in Mexico City. Continue reading... | | | | | | | Sexual congress, cigarettes and David Bowie: the Wigmore Hall's hidden history | | by John Gilhooly May 31, 2021 | | The world famous London concert hall celebrates its 120th birthday today. Its artistic director picks 12 of the hall’s greatest – and most unexpected – moments The Wigmore Hall, in Wigmore Street, London W1, opened its doors on 31 May 1901 with a concert that featured, among others, Italian composer and pianist Ferruccio Busoni and the Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe. The concert hall was known until 1916 as Bechstein Hall, after the German piano manufacturer whose showrooms were next door and which had built the hall. Bechstein was forced to cease trading in Britain during the first world war and the venue was sold and renamed Wigmore Hall and opened under the new title in 1917. In these past 120 years it has become established as one of the world’s great recital venues. Continue reading... | | | | | The Wicker Man: 1973 folk-horror endures to this day as a masterpiece of the form | | by Shaad D'Souza May 31, 2021 | | Free love and folk-singing hides a dark secret on the Scottish island of Summerisle in a film that’s bracing, exciting and downright funny • The Wicker Man is available to stream in Australia on Mubi. For more recommendations of what to stream in Australia, click here Have you seen the horror film about a gormless, well-intentioned westerner lured to a lush, sparsely populated isle in search of meaning, only to find paganism, unbridled sexual politics, folk dancing and abject violence? I’m not talking about Midsommar, the 2019 folk-horror hit by auteur Ari Aster that freaked out audiences with its broad-daylight senicide and twee ritualism. I’m referring to a film that came out nearly 50 years earlier, and which often out-weirds and out-wilds its younger cousin despite containing none of the gore or violence. I’m talking about The Wicker Man, the 1973 British horror-musical that popularised the folk-horror genre, and endures to this day as a masterpiece of the form. Continue reading... | | | | | TV stars and fans to appear as holograms at Bafta awards | | by Maya Wolfe-Robinson May 31, 2021 | | Public can sign up for the chance to line the red carpet and meet their favourite actors TV stars and fans will follow in the virtual footsteps of Tupac Shakur, Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston by appearing in hologram form at the Bafta television awards, it has been announced. Nominees for this year’s British Academy Television Awards who cannot attend the 6 June ceremony because of Covid restrictions can be beamed on to the red carpet. The technology will be offered to TV stars who may be restricted to production filming bubbles as well as fans who had hoped to line the red carpet. Continue reading... | | | | | |
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