Reaction Contributor
Saturday, 23 May 2020
Something has happened at the Royal Academy: someone below the age of fifty, and very out-of-step with their normal non-pandemic …
Continue reading "Coronavirus and the arts: The Royal Academy goes virtual"
By Francesca Peacock
Saturday, 2 May 2020
At the end of Pure, and indeed for much of the series, I was in floods of tears. This could be …
Continue reading "Channel 4’s Pure, a comedy about OCD, is pure dead brilliant"
By Francesca Peacock
Saturday, 18 April 2020
There’s a moment in The Bell (1973), where Dora – a young art-student turned wife married to her lecturer who has already left …
Continue reading "A quarantined love-letter to Iris Murdoch"
By Francesca Peacock
Friday, 10 April 2020
The Globe has uploaded its 2018 production of Hamlet for virtual coronavirus viewing directed by Michelle Terry, then in her …
Continue reading "Gender bending productions sell Hamlet short"
By Francesca Peacock
Saturday, 4 April 2020
1963 Brighton seems like a foreign country, but 2011 London seems hardly less distant. In the opening scene of One …
Continue reading "One Man, Two Guvnors / National Theatre Live review – sweetly innocent comedy"
By Francesca Peacock
Wednesday, 1 April 2020
Eleanor Rigby, The Beatles, 1966 Everyone knows the lyrics to Eleanor Rigby and the stories they tell. Thanks to The …
Continue reading "Radio Reaction: The Beatles’ ordinary elegy"
By Francesca Peacock
Saturday, 28 March 2020
Hadley Freeman’s latest book begins with a hidden shoebox of her grandmother’s photos and trinkets, but its scope reaches far …
Continue reading "Hadley Freeman’s House of Glass review – tender, compelling, and relevant"
By Francesca Peacock
Wednesday, 18 March 2020
Art is never just art. From Duchamp’s Fountain to the Parthenon Sculptures, art works are never just paintings, sculptures, or …
Continue reading "Titian: Love, Desire, Death review – endless female flesh"
By Francesca Peacock
Saturday, 14 March 2020
There’s a moment near the end of Strange Hotel (2020) in which the novel’s subject comments “[f]unny, how unbearable I’m …
Continue reading "Strange Hotel by Eimear McBride review – an unremittingly annoying novel"
By Francesca Peacock
