For sheer painterly pleasure, Nige says you can't do better than visit the John Singer Sargent exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, running until 25 May... To the National Portrait Gallery for the John Singer Sargent exhibition, Portraits of Artists and Friends, which is, unsurprisingly, brilliant. Such dash, such effortless technical mastery, ... Read More...
Dabbler Review
Current TV and film
Nige is blown away by Norwegian painter Peder Balke's masterly seascapes, in an exhibition currently showing at London's National Gallery... I admit I'd never heard of Peder Balke before reading about this exhibition. Balke was a Norwegian painter (1804-87) whose mature style was so heavily criticised in his day that he ... Read More...
If you're following the latest series of Spiral on BBC Four, or wondering whether to start watching from the beginning, here's Brit's introductory guide to the French cop show... The first thing to say about Spiral (in France: Engrenages, meaning not in fact ‘Spiral’ but ‘Gears’) is that it offers the ... Read More...
The Royal Academy's exhibition of paintings by Giovanni Battista Moroni is the first large-scale survey of his works to be staged outside Italy. Nige reports... I only knew Moroni from the handful of his intriguing portraits in the National Gallery - including the famous Portrait of a Tailor (top) - and I was eager ... Read More...
Worm sets off into the wilderness to review 'Cabins', a stunning new photographic book published by TASCHEN… I'm slightly embarrassed to say this in public, but I must confess to being something of a Grand Designs addict. My little addiction enables me to re-watch every episode again and again, despite being repulsed by ... Read More...
Daniel Kalder on a space adventure that would really annoy Nigel Farage... I’ve never been much of a Star Trek fan. It’s not because I don’t like Science Fiction- Star Wars and alien invasion B-movies were a big part of my childhood, I grew up reading 2000AD, and I wrote my ... Read More...
Christmas may be long over, but we've got a humdinger of a turkey for you - in the shape of a strange film about Charles Dickens. Luke Honey investigates... In the advent of my late youth, I’ve developed an interest in the life and works of Charles Dickens. I’ve devoured the ... Read More...
We enjoy a strange book, an imaginative, weird and uncategorisable exploration of the East London marshes... “What is this book?” you might ask on finishing it. Entertaining, enlightening and a fluent read, certainly. But as a whole it doesn’t fit any genre: ghost stories are mingled with memoir, local history with ... Read More...
A true master is enjoying a revival of interest - today we take a particular look at Vasily Grossman's An Armenian Sketchbook. In 1998 I stumbled upon a Russian novel called Life and Fate. I was surprised because I had never heard of it or its author Vasily Grossman, yet by ... Read More...
Jonathan Meades returns to our screens tonight with The Joy of Essex (BBC Four, 9pm). Our own Jonathon Green finds his old friend in typical acerbic, cliché-bashing form... Jonathan Meades, who has guided us of late around the Baltic Fringe and through the less obvious aspects of France, has made his ... Read More...
