Category: Reviews

Reviews of books. exhibitions, and other stuff I have seen.

Samurai

March 11, 2026

Apparently they are more commonly referred to as Bushi in Japan? We went to see the British Museum’s exhibition which explains the long history of the Samurai. Beginning as medieval warriors, they effectively became the Japanese upper class until their abolition in the late nineteenth century, when the rule of the Emperor was restored and the Shogunate brought to an end.

Like their aristocratic counterparts in Europe, the Samurai retained an affection for swords and suits of armour. One set of Samurai armour here was sent to King James (I and VI) who would surely have understood the double significance of the compliment and warning it embodied. Another suit was later sent to Queen Victoria. While they retained a sense of themselves as warriors, the Samurai developed an interest in drama and culture generally, which may have helped while away the days they were required to attend the court at Edo (rather the way Louis XIV made the French nobility come to Versailles?) As a whole social class they naturally included valiant women, and it seems gay and/or cross-dressing young men were not unknown.

The exhibition features a wide range of fabulous and illuminating artefacts, but it is those extraordinary helmets that are really the stars. They are elaborately decorated with dragons, birds, and a finely worked butterfly, and there is one with leaves that Katharine said resembled a pixie hat. One Samurai seems to have been unable to decide between horns and a massive fist – so he got both. These all seem rather impractical: European knights had fancy tournament armour with decoration and crests, but when it came to an actual fight they were inclined to switch to the plain, streamlined steel that best deflected blades and points. It seems that in Japan being visible and showing high status was more important than guiding weapons away from your cranium. The followers of each Daimyo (top Samurai) had a different style of cover for the heads of their spears, and apparently there were actually spotter’s reference books, so you could identify which great lord was passing by on the weary trip to or from Edo.

Very interesting. Here is King James wearing his Samurai armour (this never happened).

Perfection

March 6, 2026

I read Vincenzo Latronico’s book Perfection, about a young Italian couple who move to Berlin, where they live a highly fashionable life, working as web designers, going to trendy bars and restaurants, making friends with an international community of highly mobile young professionals, and above all, owning a series of beautiful objects that help create stunning pictures for their Instagram feed. It’s inspired by Georges Perec’s Things. The book is clever and very readable, and I recommend it – it was shortlisted for the International Booker and received well-deserved praise.

It’s a very believable account set in a specific time and place which Latronico must surely have experienced, full of neat, exact references. The theme, lightly but clearly outlined, is the contrast between a life that looks perfect ‘in the pictures’ but as lived falls a little short of ideal and becomes subtly unrewarding in a way the couple find hard to address.

Stylistically, it is highly unusual, consisting entirely of generalised descriptions of the sort of thing the couple do, the kind of meals they eat, what types of people tend to become their friends (few Germans) and so on. There is no dialogue or directly described action, and we are frequently told about feelings and moods they often felt. The narrative stays at this high level of generality throughout. It works fine, but I can’t help thinking how the tutor on a creative writing course, or some publisher offering feedback would respond. Why not have someone murdered, they might suggest, then the reader has a story to draw them through all this lovely description? Could you relate an argument they have over soft furnishings or something, just to bring these brand references to life? Have you ever heard of Joseph Campbell and the Hero’s Journey?

This is a very successful, celebrated book, but you and I could never get away with writing like this. You have to ask, how did Latronico ever get a literary agent to take this on? The answer seems to be – he married one.

Seurat

February 19, 2026

We went to the Seurat exhibition at the Courtauld. It is a small, focused show, featuring a series of paintings he did of ports and landscapes along the Channel coast, including some preparatory sketches. This gives a good opportunity to make comparisons and see the development of his technique.

Seurat of course was the leading exponent of pointillism, in which the picture is built up from hundreds of dots of unmixed colour. One aspect of the method that I hadn’t appreciated is that dots of the opposite colour are always included, so for example in a blue area there will be some dots of orange. This is meant to give a special vibrancy to the colour. Often it really does, lending a unique luminosity to the paintings, but I thought in other cases it was less effective. Seen from a distance those less successful works look very much like straight, accurately realistic pictures.

We’ve seen Seurat’s pictures before, and in fact the Courtauld itself has several on display that are not part of the current show. But the consistency of subject and the interesting sketches here make it an illuminating exhibition.

Mozart at the RFH

January 26, 2026

We went to an enjoyable concert consisting of the Overture to the Magic Flute, Piano Concerto no. 21, and the Requiem. Music this popular is often used as a lure to get audiences to listen to something more obscure, but this was pure pleasure.

I remember being shocked when I first discovered that the usual version of the Requiem is a completion of a work Mozart never finished himself. Whether or not he really came to think of it as music for his own funeral, it’s impossible not to be reminded of his early death, which certainly deprived us of some of the greatest classical music never written. Imagine the results of an extended rivalry between Mozart and Beethoven, each needling the other into constantly raising their game, like some Romantic era Lennon and McCartney…

Woman In Mind

December 11, 2025

We went to see the new production of Woman In Mind, the Alan Ayckbourn classic, staring Sheridan Smith as Susan and with Romesh Ranganathan as Bill Windsor. It’s a great show and I recommend it: funnily enough my only reservations are about the play itself. There are some spoilers in what follows.

The story is in essence about a woman losing her mind. In the early stages her delusional and at first ideal life contrasts with the depressing reality, as she switches between the two. I would have liked a neat resolution to all this, but we don’t get one: instead the delusions get stronger, less controllable and less pleasant and eventually swallow her up.

I said one side of the story is the depressing reality of her life, but in fact our faith in the reality of even the ‘real’ parts is gradually undermined (or at least, mine was). Bill Windsor seems to move across gradually from sensible reality to florid delusion. Muriel the sister-in-law seems like a caricature, too completely awful to be a real person. The behaviour of Susan’s son is not depressing in normal ways but bizarre, and seems to revolve around her, even if in a most negative way. So perhaps in the end we are to realise that the entire play is the record of a set of growing delusions that reflect reality only in a distorted way. That can still be interesting, but I think a little less than a play that does engage with real life effectively.

Grayson Perry Delusions

July 18, 2025

Delusions of Grandeur at the Wallace Collection is an exhibition in which Grayson Perry reacts to the items in the museum. It got lukewarm reviews when it opened, perhaps because of a lack of coherence. Certainly Perry makes things complicated. We know that context changes the significance and even the value of art, and he likes to control that context by inventing new artists to be the ‘creators’ of some of his work – arguably even ‘Grayson Perry’ is one. Here apart from personas we have seen before he introduces the artist Shirley Smith, also the deluded Honourable Millicent Wallace who believes herself to be the true heir to the Wallace Collection. This opens the way to many reflections on the palatial and the ladylike. He complicates things further by bringing in the work of two real outsider artists, Madge Gill (whose stuff was exhibited here in its own right when the galleries had been emptied in WWII) and Alois Corbaz. So there is no simple story to the exhibition: but how could there be? The collection is complex and so is Perry, and this is the shadow thrown by the former on the latter (or vice versa, or both). This unmanageable complexity is acknowledged right at the beginning by a figure of a Man of Stories who has narrative threads literally bursting out of him.

Coherent or not, Perry is never uninteresting, and there are some nice things here, notably a helmet and figure in armour that are a tribute to the Wallace’s formidable collection of arms and armour, but also great objects in themselves. The ‘tapestries’ Perry goes in for these days are less successful in my eyes. Whisper it quietly, but perhaps the best stuff is the pots.

Not for everyone – you probably know already whether you like Perry’s stuff or not – but I enjoyed it.

Hiroshige

July 17, 2025

I suppose Hiroshige is the second name that comes to mind when you think of Japanese artists. I had him down mentally as a pretty straight landscape man. However, the current show at the British Museum is amazing and shows him to have been the creator of pictures of huge originality and impact, really second to none. His animals are terrific, and those landscapes are powerfully evocative. He has a particular gift for misty distances which provides a great complement to the hard outlines of printmaking.

Not to be missed if you like ukiyo-e at all.

Here We Are

May 27, 2025

Went with Elizabeth (thanks to her) to see Sondheim’s last work Here We Are, currently at the National Theatre. For Sondheim’s many fans, this last musical, left in draft form at his death, is a must-see, but it’s an entertaining evening for anyone.

It’s based on two Bunuel films: The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and The Exterminating Angel, but transplanted to America and infused with a New York sense of humour. In the first part the characters just can’t seem to get brunch: in the second they somehow cannot leave the room. Meanwhile they are covertly involved in a drug cartel and a revolution is brewing.

Bunuel’s originals, though surreal, had a dream-like logic which is missing here, but in compensation you get the wisecracking humour. You don’t expect to come out of a late Sondheim show humming the big melodies, but if you’re not a grouch you’ll enjoy the singing.

To me Sondheim represents the pinnacle of the curious trend that briefly saw the Broadway musical turn away from its song-and-dance razzle-dazzle roots towards something much more intellectual. That all stopped when Andrew Lloyd Webber put strong stories and popular tunes back in place, but we were left with some interesting works – and this is a decent final addition to the portfolio.

Restoration of Anne Boleyn

May 19, 2025

This figure, a modern carving on a modern house, became a bit of a landmark in Carshalton. It was removed for restoration a long time ago, but today Anne is back!

Why Anne Boleyn? She stands opposite ‘Anne Boleyn’s Well’ by All Saints’ churchyard, but in fact the history is garbled: the well was originally associated with the local Boulogne family, not connected with the Boleyns (or Bullens as they were more prosaically known).

Nice to see her back, though.

The Score

April 11, 2025

Brian Cox gives a masterly performance as J.S.Bach in The Score at the Theatre Royal Haymarket (whose opulent interior provides a suitably baroque background). The play, by Oliver Cotton and directed by Trevor Nunn, centres on the true story of Bach’s visit to the court of Frederick the Great, where he was challenged to improvise a three-part fugue on an ‘unfuguable’ theme – which he did, a feat of mental musicianship that seems hardly credible.

Here though, Bach rather implausibly uses the opportunity to denounce Frederick’s military ‘interventions’ and the horrors they bring with them. The King is portrayed as a precursor of later German belligerence, but Bach’s musical insights reveal the complexes that motivate him, rooted in an unhappy childhood. The play is neatly constructed and works pretty well apart from sometimes getting just a little bogged down.

The weakest part, in my view, is Voltaire, who appears as a secondary character but is written, not as the sharp and witty sceptic we know, but as a over-demonstrative French stereotype. He is allowed only one characteristic witticism (‘murderers are severely punished, unless they kill thousands, to the sound of trumpets’). If Voltaire had written this play it would have been shorter and funnier, but that’s a tough benchmark, and Cox’s bravura turn helps make it a well-spent evening.