archaeology
Mark Sheerin
Stonehenge is about 5,000 years old; three photographic artists currently exhibiting in the visitor centre are all under the age of 25. The juxtaposition of 21st century and the ancient world has been facilitated by Shout Out Loud, a youth engagement programme from English Heritage, custodians of this historic monument. In collaboration with Photoworks, this gives rise to the first ever exhibition of new photography at the site.So much yet so little is known about stone circles one might wonder what three emerging artists might add to the sum of our understanding around prehistory. Indeed, Read more ...
Jon Turney
Working on materials was basic to human culture from the start: chipping at flint to make a hand-axe; fashioning bone or wood; drying hides. In time, people discovered that some materials, especially when put to trial by fire, were special: harder, shinier, more attractive, or more deadly.Philip Marsden is interested in those materials, yes, but especially in the now-buried traces of their excavation. And his latest book – Under a Metal Sky: A Journey Through Minerals, Greed and Wonder – is interestingly difficult to characterise. It’s a blend (an alloy?) of geology, archaeology, Read more ...
Gary Naylor
A new theatre? In 2023? Now there’s a shot in the arm for the post-pandemic gloom. But there’s no business like show business – not for Mayfield Lavender anyway, who have found a corner of one of their beautiful purple fields and built an outdoor theatre for the poor, neglected souls of er… Epsom – but any investment in arts is surely welcome in these most philistine of times. Co-founded by Artistic Director Joe McNeice and Executive Director Brendan Maye, the space is still a little rough and ready at the moment and its vast stage may need a little reconfiguring unless budgets Read more ...
Joseph Walsh
Zeina Durra’s sophomore feature arrives on our screens a decade on from her debut, The Imperialists Are Still Alive! It was worth the wait. Luxor is a subtle, low-key drama that possesses an atmosphere of meditative calm, exploring a life that has seen too much pain and is desperate to find a way to heal. “Do you ever worry about opening up places that have been laid to rest?” asks Hana (Andrea Riseborough) to her one-time lover and archaeologist, Sultan (Karim Saleh). It goes without saying that it’s a loaded question. Until recently, Hana has been working as a doctor on the Jordanian- Read more ...
Katherine Waters
Arguably one of the most poignant effects of the lockdown has been to simultaneously draw attention to the connections between the arts and the distinct ways they have evolved into their own forms. Sculpture, painting, textiles, performance art, sonic installations – are now all in the same place, namely the internet. In a way, it’s exciting to have so much accessible. In another it’s deeply dreary; when viewed via a screen things are literally flat.However, though we expect words to be 2D, they conjure in different dimensions. Visual Verse is a digital publication dedicated to ekphrasis Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Christmas and Agatha Christie are a very good fit – how better to spend time with your loved ones than sitting down to watch some murder and intrigue together? So Agatha and the Curse of Ishtar was an early festive treat, another enjoyable melding of fact and fiction (mostly fiction, it should be said) from husband-and-wife producer team Tom and Emily Dalton, whose Agatha and the Truth of Murder was a hit for Channel 5 last year.We were in Ur, southern Iraq in 1928 where a team of British archaeologists led by Leonard Woolley (Jack Deam) and his assistants Max (Jonah Hauer-King) and Pearl ( Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
It’s claimed that the current world tour of Tutankhamun’s extraordinary treasures will be the last, but they said that about Frank Sinatra too. Whatever, the boy-pharaoh’s life and legend will retain their unprecedented mystique, but no thanks to this first of three programmes fronted by pop-historian Dan Snow.Obviously Channel 5 doesn’t want to vanish down a black hole of academic obscurity, but cluttering up the scenery with three ill-matched presenters treading on each other’s feet while burbling inanities was not the perfect solution. Snow always has an invisible bubble over his head Read more ...
Katherine Waters
In 1922 Hussein Abdel-Rassoul, a water boy with Howard Carter’s archaeological dig in the Valley of the Kings, accidentally uncovered a step in the sand. It proved to be the breakthrough for which Carter, on the hunt for the final resting place of King Tutankhamun, was looking. The tomb they uncovered showed signs of having been robbed in ancient times but inside thousands of items remained, selected for a journey to the afterlife, which had lain undisturbed for millennia. The survival of some was almost inconceivable: wooden boxes, linen gloves, unguents and cases packed with food. Others Read more ...
graham.rickson
Keda’s already in trouble for not living up to his father’s expectations. And then there’s an unfortunate clash with an angry bison which sends him careering down a steep cliff face and left for dead. Welcome to Upper Paleolithic Europe. Albert Hughes’s Alpha doesn’t contain many narrative surprises; its plot involving a lost boy struggling against the odds to get back home is straightforward in the extreme.Keda’s essential decency is signalled early on via chiselled cheekbones and glossy hair. Kodi Smit-McPhee succeeds brilliantly in bringing him to life, which can’t be easy when he speaks Read more ...
graham.rickson
Handel: Works for Keyboard Philippe Grisvard (harpsichord) (Audax)Mention Handel's keyboard output and most folks (including saps like me) will think of his eight imposing Suites… and that's about it. Which is why harpsichordist Philippe Grisvard’s new collection is so useful in plugging the gaps, an attempt “to explore the different faces of Handel”, taking in the years between 1700 and 1740. Grisvard also throws in short pieces by musicians who played a key role in Handel's development. Like his teacher Friedrich William Zachow, whose little Capriccio in D minor is a treat: its four minutes Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Lord Clark – “of Civilisation”, as he was nicknamed, not necessarily affectionately – presented the 13 episodes of the eponymous series commissioned by David Attenborough for BBC Two in 1969; it was subtitled “A Personal View”, and encompassed only Western Europe (from which even Spain was excluded). The whole guide, narrated in that upper-class accent, wrapped in bespoke suiting and accompanied by full-scale orchestral throbbing, was the kind of documentary that families stayed home to watch. It proved, said those rightly enthralled by that authoritative patrician presence, that the Read more ...
mark.kidel
As Wonder Woman hits screens worldwide, the publication of a book that explores the myth and reality of the Amazon seems timely. The latest of John Man’s works of popular history is opportunistic enough to end with a fascinating account of the origins of the female world-saviour originally launched by DC Comics in 1941. He relies extensively on – and acknowledges – Jill Lepore’s The Secret History of Wonder Woman, which explains the proto-feminist origins of the female answer to Superman.The invention of Wonder Woman is one of the most recent manifestations of a mythologising thread Read more ...