World War Two
Hanna Weibye
It is an axiom of Israel Galván criticism to say the Spaniard is wired differently. He's the "Bowie of flamenco" - leggy and intense, unpredictably sparky, intemittently brilliant, and sometimes incomprehensible. His new show, Lo Real/Le Réel/The Real which had its UK premiere at the Edinburgh International Festival last night is about gypsies under Nazism and in the Holocaust, but it approaches its subject in an impressionistic, roundabout way that during the performance feels a lot more like a journey into Israel Galván's oddball consciousness than a history lesson.Of course, that is a kind Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Haste was of the essence as the Allies hurried to create the ultimate weapon. They were fearful that Hitler’s Germany, which had been first to split the atom, would beat them to it – and they knew that the Nazis would have no compunction about using it.Subtitled “A Thousand Days of Fear”, this film from Tim Ward and Domenic Mastrippolito was in a hurry too, which was a shame because with the wealth of material here – interviews with many of the main players, some presumably still living, others interviewed previously (the distinction wasn't always clear), as well as some remarkable archive Read more ...
Florence Hallett
When a photographer is as little known as Shirley Baker, it is probably only natural that we scour her work for clues to the personality behind the camera. Certainly, Baker’s photographs of inner city Salford and Manchester, taken over a period of 20 years, seem to offer as full and intriguing a picture of Baker herself as of the disappearing communities she was committed to recording. Her knack of making eye contact with the people she photographs makes her an active, if invisible participant in the narrative; an ice cream man catches her eye at precisely the moment he hands a woman her ice Read more ...
Michael Symmons Roberts
I am currently in the middle of a project called Messiaen 2015: Between Heaven and the Clouds, a year-long series of commissions and events around the UK, exploring Messiaen’s Vingt Regards sur l‘Enfant-Jésus, curated by pianist Cordelia Williams. So far, we’ve held a series of talks, performances and seminars with musicologists including Rowan Williams, Ben Quash (King’s College London Professor of Christianity and the Arts) and Birmingham Conservatoire Professor of Music Christopher Dingle. So far, the events have been fascinating – for us as participants and (I hope) for the audience Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
The exhibition Out of Chaos is a powerful dose of specific human experience, here presented almost exclusively in the form of portraits and group scenes. The selection comes almost entirely from the more than 1,300 works of art owned by Ben Uri Gallery, whose centenary commemoration this is; the gallery was founded in 1915, primarily to explore the work of Jewish artists in Britain. The majority of those in the collection are immigrants or first generation, with a few from beyond this island to expand on the Jewish experience. Several score works are arranged in chronological clusters, Read more ...
Jasper Rees
The plot to assassinate Hitler that everyone knows about was on 20 July 1944. It had its Hollywood moment in 2008 with Bryan Singer’s Valkyrie, starring Tom Cruise as Colonel Von Stauffenberg. That film unfortunately arrived on the coattails of Downfall, which has since made all Anglophone portrayals of the Third Reich look dismally bogus. So it’s of note that Downfall’s director Oliver Hirschbiegel, having taken leave of his senses to make Diana, has turned his attention to the lesser-known attempt on the Führer’s life.Georg Elser’s attempt to kill Hitler took place on 8 November 1939 in Read more ...
Barney Harsent
The 1965 film The Heroes of Telemark, documenting the Allies' mission to stop the Nazis from going nuclear, is to historical accuracy what David Starkey is to tact. Or common decency. The Saboteurs however, a Norwegian/Danish/British TV co-production, seems to be keener to explore the truth behind the mission. Or at least as much of it as is known.After the first episode’s slow, measured pace, we began the second in a secret military base in Scotland with a stronger sense of urgency. If we had any doubts as to just how urgent things were, these were soon quashed as the entire plan was Read more ...
Graham Fuller
What happened to Harry Lime during the war that he slid into iniquity, or was he always a swine? What cracked in him so badly that he sold diluted penicillin that gave children meningitis? What rat-like instincts of survival prompted him to betray his Czech lover so that the Russians would evict her from Austria? And why did he summon the hapless Holly Martins from America to join his racket? Was it that he could rely on Holly to be dazzled and dominated by him, as he must have been 20 years before at school?These and other questions – comprising the mystery within the mystery – are left Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
“Enjoy the war, for the peace will be savage,” was apparently a macabre joke circulating in the German military towards the end of World War Two. Peter Molloy’s searing documentary, 1945: The Savage Peace, showed us just how prescient it would prove, charting the cruelties that would follow the end of conflict. Man’s inhumanity to man would continue long after the war itself had formally ended.It showed itself in many different forms of vengeance and reprisal. Soviet troops advancing on Berlin raped German women of all ages on an almost unimaginable scale, not something that’s mentioned in Read more ...
Jasper Rees
You can’t move for the World Wars on the BBC. Gallipoli (100 years ago) and VE Day (70) are this month’s on-trend anniversaries, and they’ll soon budge up for VJ Day and the Somme. And let’s not forget older victories: there’s Waterloo (200 years ago), and isn’t it time to go once more unto the breach, Agincourt being 700 this year? And for extra lashings of commemoration let us now turn to Britain’s Greatest Generation.This new four-parter is revisiting events which have been covered ad infinitum already. The difference is that Britain’s Greatest Generation comes at them exclusively through Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
The phrase “improbable life” crops up more than once in Greg Olliver’s highly engaging documentary Turned Towards the Sun about the poet Micky Burn (its title is that of the writer’s autobiography). It’s a contradiction in terms, perhaps, but as a way of expressing the sheer richness of a life-story, one that overlapped with some of the notable events of the 20th century, encounters with Fascism and Communism, participation in one of the most daring World War II commando raids, imprisonment in Colditz, a complicated sexuality, and 50 years as a writer, it works rather well.It reminded me Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Perhaps only Sheridan Smith could have played the role of Lisa Lynch in The C Word [***], not just because of the no-messing directness she brought to the role, but because Lynch nominated her for the job. Lynch had attained a particular kind of celebrity as author of the blog, Alright Tit, about how she was coping with a diagnosis of breast cancer. This became the book, The C Word, and when a tv adaptation was mooted, Lynch tweeted Smith and said "only you can play me".The bitter twist in the tale was that Nicole Taylor's original C Word screenplay ended when Lynch had been declared Read more ...