To rescue Kahlo from the clutches of the corporate art market, we need to acknowledge the overt and covert political dimensions of the work, demands GAVIN O’TOOLE
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The corrosive megalomania of UK power elites
There is a disturbing circularity about Britain’s decline, a form of costume drama time loop so inescapable it could almost be the stuff of fantasy, writes GAVIN O’TOOLE
DELUSIONS OF GRANDEUR: Boris Johnson pictured in front of Clifford's tower in York while on a Vote Leave campaign
If you can see past the relentless commodification you will be rewarded by enormously powerful work, suggests JENNY MITCHELL
CHRIS SEARLE revels in the one-off collaboration between an American polymath and a British Muslim, and detects the presence of their revolutionary forebear
GORDON PARSONS revels in an ebullient production of Shakespeare’s magical comedy
BRENT CUTLER welcomes a thoughtful analysis of the Erdogan regime, viewed through the evolving history of a neighbourhood in Istanbul
GORDON PARSONS regrets the price, but is dazzled by an outstandingly ambitious study of the way art restoration in particular, and culture in general was weaponised by the Nazis
United Kingdom
by Adrian Bingham
Polity £12.99
THE convulsions being induced in the United Kingdom by its latest Conservative psychodrama are a timely example of the underlying theme woven throughout this book.
They are a dramatic illustration of the secular decline of a country badly failed by its political establishment, so limited in their vision they have been unable or unwilling to fashion a narrative about a collective future compelling enough to escape an omnipresent past.
The absence of that narrative, while largely survivable as the country grasped temporary lifelines to mitigate the loss of empire — Commonwealth trade, the EU, Cold War alliances — may now have created the conditions for a terminal fever to consume a prostrate patient.
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