Thomas Sutcliffe



Profile:
Full name: Thomas Sutcliffe

Area of interest: Arts, Culture, Current Affairs

Journals/Organisation: The Independent

Email: [mailto:t.sutcliffe@independent.co.uk t.sutcliffe@independent.co.uk]

Personal website:

Website: http://www.independent.co.uk/biography/tom-sutcliffe

Blog:

Representation:

Networks:



Biography:
About:

Education: Emmanuel College, Cambridge: English

Career: After graduation joined BBC as a researcher, going on to become the editor of Radio 4’s Kaleidoscope arts programme; left the BBC to help launch The Independent, as its first arts editor (1986)
 * Resumed a career as broadcaster presenting Radio 4’s Saturday Review arts discussion programme from its launch (1999), has also presented BBC2’s Newsnight Review, is the chair of Round Britain Quiz, and on BBC2 presented the six-part Watching series, based on his own collection of essays

Current position/role: Columist, television reviewer; also writes occasional obituaries


 * also writes/has written for: The Guardian

Other roles/Main role: Broadcaster, presenter

Other activities:

Disclosures:

Viewpoints/Insight:

Broadcast media:
 * BBC Radio 4 presenter of Saturday Review and Round Britain Quiz

Video:

Controversy/Criticism:

Awards/Honours:

Scoops:

Other:



Books & Debate:


Latest work:

Speaking/Appearances:

Debate: 

Journals:

 * No regular column



Articles:

 * Forget ‘brilliant’ theatre – the word has become the dullest form of flattery - Edinburgh is awash with shows touting their brilliance. However, what thrills on the fringe comes not from perfection but from a collaboration between audience and performer - 14th August 2014
 * Why save Stubbs's kangaroo? It's cute – and it was an 18th-century viral hit - The painting was reproduced because it provoked the same 'have you seen this?' instinct that drives social networks now - 7th November 2013



The Independent:
Column name: A Critical View

Remit/Info: Arts and Culture

Section:

Role: Columnist

Pen-name:

Email: [mailto:t.sutcliffe@independent.co.uk t.sutcliffe@independent.co.uk]

Website: Independent.co / Thomas Sutcliffe

Commissioning editor:

Day published: Saturday

Regularity: Weekly

Column format:

Average length:



Articles: 2013

 * Why theatre's alternative space invaders need to leave their comfort zone - 23rd July
 * Instruction: don't take the art at this year's MIF seriously just because it's called art - How much simpler it is when art comes with an instruction sheet. Pretty much everything does in "do it 2013", a centrepiece for the Manchester International Festival this year - 12th july
 * See 60 Lowry paintings in a row and deep melancholy sets in – wherever you're from - 5th July
 * Where are all the best postcards at the Magritte Museum? Put that in your pipe and smoke it - 22nd June
 * James Gandolfini and Tony Soprano are both gone - is it the actor or the character we’re mourning? - There wasn’t a shade of judgement in his performance as Tony Soprano, only a sympathy for the messy, disappointing business of trying to make life work - 20th June
 * Marc Chagall tried many things, but ended up being true only to himself - 15th June
 * 'Strange Interlude': Careful with that aside, Eugene O'Neill. It might be funnier than you expected - 8th June
 * Sorry James Salter, if a book's any good, the best lines will linger. And you can quote me on that - 1st June
 * As Hay-on-Wye opens this week, it's time for book festivals to open a new and exciting chapter - One of the world's most renowned literature festivals, Hay-on-Wye, begins its week of readings, talks and question-and-answer sessions with celebrity authors today. But, are readings, talks and questions and answers enough any more? - 25th May
 * Here is the perfect illustration of how a picture can change a book for you - 18th May
 * In the visual arts aesthetic standards can't be measured by hard labour or the lack of it - 11th May
 * If you say you like ITV sitcom ‘Vicious’ or ‘Django Unchained’ its more than a statement of taste - 4th May
 * If Maria Miller wants art that sells, she should focus on getting art that's good - She said the arts must make the case for themselves as a "commodity". How her audience prevented themselves from pelting her with coffee cups, I just don't know - 28th April
 * Grey matters when it comes to bringing out the best of the Dutch masters at the Rijksmuseum - 20th April
 * You can't make a West End musical out of a movie soundtrack - 13th April
 * There's nothing classy about making a display of your passion for high art - 6th April
 * A Muslim 'Measure for Measure'?  - That's one updated version of Shakespeare I'd love to see - 23rd March
 * As in The Paperboy and Side Effects, there's nothing more thrilling than a jump between genres -16th March
 * A far from faultless royal appointment in The Audience, but Helen Mirren is still majestic - 9th March
 * TV's culture club aren't sitting comfortably – but don't write the arts off yet - 2nd March
 * Why the shock of the new was so much more shocking to musical audiences - 23rd February
 * As Jim Crace's ‘Harvest’ shows, Ruskin was right to warn against romanticising the natural world - 16th February
 * Sometimes a rut is just a rut. But sometimes, for an artist, it's a seam of gold - 9th February
 * The Turn of The Screw proves it's easy to scare audiences. The real trick is keeping them scared - 2nd February
 * Why the BBC’s decision to muzzle the Major was far from Fawlty - The broadcaster must think of its audience over "completist" concerns. Plus, the joys of an underwhelming exhibit at the British Library - 26th January
 * The Shard's view is a new joy, but taking the high ground has always elevated the senses - 19th January
 * Blue plaques give the city soul - so why not pay for it ourselves? - Rules should ensure towns aren’t blotched with commemorations to Harry Styles or Towie - 7th January
 * Django Unchained and the dated shooting devices that no longer hit the target - 5th January



Articles: 2012

 * Review of the Year in Arts 2012: This was the year when the local became gloriously global - Whether we take quantity, quality or universality as our assessment criteria, this has been a remarkable year for art - 22nd December
 * One thing's for sure: the judges of this Booker rival won't be lost for words... - 15th December
 * Museums should market their obscure objects of desire - 8th December
 * Nick Boles wants to build on the greenbelt, but it's too soon for us to admire man-made landscapes - 1st December
 * Why do some cultures prefer small things? I think Tom Lubbock would have known - 17th November
 * You don't have to be able to see the future to get the benefit of good timing - The "timeliness" of new play NSFW has nothing to do with Savile; sympathy for sleepy theatregoers; what a title can add to art -10th November
 * Whether it's The Master or The Hobbit, pity those purists who care more about format than film - How a screening of The Master turned into a purist's parade; a stress-free way to view the Sistine and why swearing is big and clever - 3rd November
 * We'll know we've made real progress, when colour on stage isn't an issue at all - It's almost impossible to imagine a white actor playing Othello in the current cultural climate, so is 'colour-blind' casting really colour-blind? - 27th October
 * Never mind the bake-offs, here's some anarchy in the UK television industry - A new idea for television, a truly moving production and a good word for an audiobook - 20th October
 * Shameless was once a groundbreaking show but now seems to have lost its relevance - You could also argue that the riots of 2011 and the welfare cuts of 2012, make Shameless more necessary than ever. Creator Paul Abbott evidently disagrees - 16th October
 * It should be child's play to accept that some modern art is rubbish - Some modern art is rubbish; All the oils you own yourself; Thank skeuomorphs very much - 29th September
 * These Bronze masterpieces are pure gold - How the glory of the Royal Academy's new exhibition erases time; magnificent marginalia marketing and the flashiest film we've seen in years - 22nd September
 * The BBC doesn't need an arts strategy. It needs ambition and courage - The BBC's Arts Editor, Will Gompertz, appears to have been in unusually candid mood a few weeks ago when he went on Radio 5 Live and described the experience of sitting on the BBC's Arts Board as “hysterical” - 8th September
 * Unpalatable truths revealed in the real story of an officer and a gentleman - Readers of fiction, Howard Jacobson argued at a literary symposium recently, ought to be able to withstand the “expression of an ugly point of view” - 1st September
 * The combative critic whose waspish words had more than just shock value - As with quite a lot of things these days I first read about the death of Robert Hughes on Twitter - 12th August
 * When there are a few too many stereotypes on the streets of London - I visited New York and found, to my great delight, that the city really did feature large chimneys funnelling steam out of the pavement - 4th August
 * Film freaks who can't see the big picture are worse than football thugs - 28th July
 * It's a mystery how, but even the greatest artists can turn out the occasional dud - I don't know how you would go about quantifying these things, but last week I found myself standing in front of what must certainly be a candidate for the worst painting ever produced by a significant artist - 7th July
 * In literature it's not what you say, it's the way you say 'he said' that matters - One of the questions asked by several of the critics who went to see Gatz – Elevator Repair Services' marathon staging of The Great Gatsby – was what the theatrical presentation had added to F Scott Fitzgerald's novel - 23rd June
 * From William Hogarth to Martin Amis, it's hard to resist an amoral monster - My question this week: which did Hogarth enjoy drawing more – Gin Lane or Beer Street? Or to put it a different way, which panel do you think he drew first? - 16th June
 * Wes Anderson is so animating - I finally "got" Wes Anderson the other day - 2nd June
 * Space, the final frontier for what to say about art when we are lost for words - "I'd suggest you walk around and explore the space," said the usher at the door to dreamthinkspeak's excellent remix of Hamlet at the Brighton Festival - 19th May
 * Perhaps the dreaded interval is good for more than just selling ice cream - I'm not easily alarmed at the door of a theatre, even in these days of litigation-wary admonition - 12th May
 * Nixon's crisis makes good drama - I've occasionally wondered whether any American president could beat Richard Nixon when it comes to cultural magnetism - 20th April
 * When the object is to collect objects - I found myself wondering about sets appeal the other day - 13th April
 * Death of a Duchess is truly dreadful - Sometimes you catch sight of your culture from an odd angle and wonder what it might look like to an alien - 6th April
 * makeover that's far from majestic'' - Something interesting happens to bad taste as it ages - 30th March
 * How telethons can offer some relief... - Nobody's yet walked barefoot across the Alps to raise money, but I wouldn't bet against it - 23rd March
 * A Titanic struggle to avoid cliché - I hadn't heard of Titanoraks before last week... but I suspect more of us belong to this grouping than actually know it - 16th March
 * The banality of this kind of evil - Like any novelist on the brink of publication, Russell Banks has been feeling a little apprehensive about the reception for his latest book, Lost Memory of Skin - 9th March
 * Could you spot the future if it arrived? - Here's a simple cultural thought experiment - 2nd March
 * Take a shot at what it all means - "Any reaction to the material is the right reaction." As diktats go you can hardly complain that this is over-controlling - 10th February
 * The luxurious nature of whimsy - I found myself thinking about the low status of whimsy the other day. The place was the Hayward Gallery, which is currently hosting the funniest art exhibition I've been to for some time - 3rd February
 * From prejudice to enlightenment - It's always nice to have a prejudice overturned, if only because it's proof that your mind is still a changeable thing - 27th January
 * Happiness hides the bigger picture - When I was at university, a friend once said to me, apropos of something I can't remember: "It's all right for you. You're always happy." I was, quite naturally, deeply offended - 20th January
 * Your action scene will leave shortly - There's a hypothesis that I think can't be true. It's that directors of an older generation, those who learned their trade long before YouTube and CGI and the internet, find it harder to match their rhythm to that of younger viewers - 13th January
 * When collector's items turn to clutter - I cleared out my library over Christmas – or rather trimmed and tidied it - 6th January



Articles: 2011

 * Mystery appeal of scuffs and smears - I'm not sure how universal this is going to be as a metaphor but it strikes me as so exact that I'm going to have a go anyway - 16th December
 * Too much charm can be a bad thing - The word that pretty much everyone has used about Martin Scorsese's latest film Hugo is "charming" - 9th December
 * Does Kate Bush deserve the five-star critics? - The phrase "critic-proof" isn't an approbatory one for most critics, for rather obvious reasons - 25th November
 * A guide to the Bard's best gags - I found myself wondering whether you could draw up a top ten of Shakespeare's best jokes the other night - 18th November
 * How's about that for a perfect exit? - Is there any secure social consensus about the appropriate colour for a funeral tracksuit? - 11th November
 * Shots in the dark for The Future - 4th November
 * Actors don't want to be caught acting - 22nd October
 * never entirely know what's going to happen when highbrow meets lowbrow, or (if we're to be democratic and un-elitist about this) something commercially no-brow'' - 14th October
 * The spirit moves a confirmed sceptic - Conor McPherson wrote an interesting piece a while ago about his play 'The Veil', which has opened at the National - 7th October
 * 'You stupid boy' spoke volumes - I found myself wondering how catchphrases work the other day, prompted in part by the death of David Croft - 30th September
 * Try not to lose the plot over spoilers... - If you really want to work up an online crowd there's one surefire way to do it. Post a review of something and give away a crucial detail of the plot without first typing the words "Spoiler Alert" - 16th September
 * The discreet charm of the misspelling - I want to write about the charm of speling this week – or orthograffy if you want to be more specific - 9th September
 * and wrong ends of the schtick'' - No artist wants to have a gimmick. A distinctive vision is one thing, a trademark style another. But a trick or a trope goes against the grain of artistry - 26th August
 * reading finally meets its Waterloo'' - I conducted an informal experiment on holiday – though to be honest the word experiment is used here in its television sense, where it conventionally means a procedure undertaken without any form of control and employing a sample so small as to make any result unreliable - 19th August
 * fine line between quirky and cutesy'' - I'm indebted to 'Midsomer Murders' for the concept of the sprechhund - 28th July
 * shock value is the soft option'' - Some ideological symbols can be flippantly deployed - the swastika isn't one of them - 22nd July
 * fantasy and realism can collide'' - Let me start with a confession of inadequacy. I don't do very well with fantasy. I don't mean by this that I can't enjoy a science fiction film or an animated film in which a house is suspended from party balloons - 15th July
 * ignorance isn't really bliss'' - I found myself snagged the other day by a charming detail in the story about a Swedish kindergarten - 8th July
 * on the net's national treasures'' - I've written about the Public Catalogue Foundation before in these pages, a wholly admirable enterprise to identify and log every oil painting in public ownership in the country - 24th June
 * isn't a crime to laugh at the police'' - I found myself in a London robbery-squad office a while ago – not hauled in for questioning myself, but accompanying a teenager who'd been aggressively relieved of his mobile phone a few days earlier - 17th June
 * classics with text appeal'' - I surrendered the theoretical battle against e-books some time ago - 10th June
 * goodness his face doesn't fit'' - Paul Giamatti's looks are as integral to his success as George Clooney's are - 27th May
 * I'll never be one of the hoard'' - I don't know if there is an antonym to the word 'collector' but if so, I'm one - 20th May
 * sow the seed of protest artfully'' - Can a Tweet be art? Well, maybe if an artist tweets it - 13th May
 * accidental art of a lasting image'' - That picture of Barack Obama and White House officials watching the live coverage of the raid on Bin Laden's country retreat very quickly became a photographic celebrity - 6th May
 * sheer joy of Miró's 'first room''' - Hands up who enjoys reading the first chapter of a biography? - 22nd April
 * all boredom makes you drowsy'' - There's often a moment in a book when your intellectual engagement with the author's argument trips over into something more intimate, a kind of identification which is as dumb – at heart – as finding you share a taste for a certain kind of chocolate - 15th April
 * time is a bad time on screen'' - I found myself thinking about gimmick movies last week, after watching Source Code, and being struck by a dog-that-didn't-bark realisation - 8th April
 * sweetness is hard to swallow'' - 'Sweet' is not the kind of word you'd ever use of a truly great film - 1st April
 * a star shines on in the memory'' - Let's perform a modest experiment into what happens when a star goes out – one that can only be conducted for a very short time and which, I regret to tell you, is already out of your reach - 25th March
 * play's the thing – after a redraft'' - The other day I went to see Blithe Spirit, a play that has some claim to delivering the greatest ratio between the time spent on bringing a drama into existence and its subsequent run in the theatre - 18th March
 * art is it anyway?'' - I'm guessing that everybody is already familiar with the capricious nature of works of art - 11th March
 * will be blood-splatter'' - films which glory in damage to the human body can (and quite often do) defend their deployment of graphic violence with the suggestion that this is authenticity not mere aesthetics - 4th March
 * you think you can shock me...'' - Feather-ruffling isn't entirely extinct - 25th February
 * a bit too slow on the drawl'' - It's something of an irony that, in most commentators' predictions, Colin Firth is squaring up against Jeff Bridges for the Best Actor Oscar - 18th February
 * it's hard to escape from reality'' - Occasionally when you're writing television reviews you come across a knot you just can't unravel before the deadline arrives - 11th February
 * art can't be taken at face value'' - Our predictability as animals is often an under-considered part of the artistic experience - 4th February
 * to lead the eye a merry dance'' - Black Swan is as wildly over-the-top as anything I've seen on a screen for years - 28th January
 * disease is a cultural epidemic'' - Cancer has become one of the great fictional resources of our age – even more important, I would guess, than tuberculosis was to the 19th-century novel and music drama - 21st January
 * rediscover the art of boredom'' - I often think that we need a bit more boredom in our life – and last week two things sharpened the sense that this modern terror ought more properly to be considered as a valuable asset - 14th January
 * Fearless? A format too far?'' - It's the traditional time for diets, and I'd like to suggest one for a medium that has been suffering from appalling middle-aged spread for quite a while now - 7th January



Articles: 2010

 * by received opinion'' - There is sometimes a comedy to the cultural life whichis not entirely dignified. What I mean by that is that you can suddenly find that your expectations about a work, and your complacent assumptions about the part you will play in the drama of your encounter with it, are overturned by what actually happens - 31st December
 * Year in Review: How the map of our culture was redrawn'' - How do you best map the cultural year? The conventional way is a kind of aesthetic Mercator projection, in which the irregular realities of the arts are smoothed out on to a single flat plane - 24th December
 * bombers and a novel twist'' - I'd like to propose an axiom. You cannot be both a good novelist and a good suicide bomber - 17th December
 * critic who sees the whole picture'' - At the beginning of this year, Tom Lubbock reviewed the Richard Hamilton retrospective at the Serpentine Gallery in London. Like all of the fine art criticism he wrote for this paper it was a notably thoughtful piece - 10th December
 * pause that says so much'' - 3rd December 2010
 * originals are still the best'' - We live in a culture where lack of originality is one of the cardinal sins, though not all cultures (historically or geographically) share that disapproval - 26th November
 * words lose their power'' - I'm going to make a pledge of abstention today and, as it happens, you're going to be able to help keep me honest, because my self-imposed prohibition doesn't involve alcohol but vocabulary - 19th November
 * discovery raises the spirits'' - Discrepancy of belief is, I imagine, a fairly familiar experience for a lot of us when it comes to big exhibitions of classical or ancient art - 12th November
 * time to queue for conceptual art'' - I don't know whether you saw the story the other day about a mysterious surge of visitors for a small exhibition at the National Gallery but, if you missed it, it was essentially a tale of popular insurgency - 5th November
 * An artistic crime?'' - The other day I saw two different works that had decided to end with the same emotional flourish - 29th October
 * Hill forever'' - I wouldn't usually suggest to you that you visit a museum that is still a bit of a shambles but I intend to this week - 22nd October
 * of mystery and imagination'' - One of the more engaging objects in Tate Modern's current Gauguin exhibition isn't a painting at all, but a house-front; four carved panels which Gauguin created to decorate his home in the Marquesas - 8th October
 * put your novel on the stage'' - You would think that Trevor Nunn might have learned his lesson after Gone With the Wind - 1st October
 * do you think you're looking at?'' - It's always surprising to find how long a history the newfangled has - 24th September
 * we still backing the wrong horse?'' - There's a venerable story about the painter Constable which is often cited by writers who want us to recognise that he was a modern pioneer, rather than an exemplar of chocolate-box traditionalism - 17th September
 * truths in a slippery read'' - When you turn page 225 of Will Self's new book, Walking to Hollywood, you get a modest surprise – or perhaps that should be an immodest one - 10th September
 * estate speak is the height of irony'' - The New York skyline is a sculpture created by the friction between civic regulation and the capitalist love of profit - 27th August
 * the joy is in the label'' - It's a rare pleasure and a small one at that – but there's something about a provocative museum label that can really lift the spirits - 20th August
 * are not built to last'' - I found myself thinking about posterity the other day, while watching a carousel of china dogs self-destruct - 30th July
 * lines that can be a giveaway'' - Can you judge a book by its epigraph? That you do is surely true, since at the point when you turn that particular page of a new novel it's pretty much all you've got to go on - 23rd July
 * water, everywhere at the Royal Academy's Sargent and the Sea exhibition'' - The Royal Academy's Sargent and the Sea exhibition has to be one of the nerdiest shows I've attended for years. I don't mean this to be a critical remark – or at least not entirely - 16th July
 * the book at clichéd blurbs'' - People have been having fun at the expense of a novelist called Nicole Krauss, who recently supplied a jacket blurb for the proof copy of David Grossman's latest novel and – by some distance – overshot the target all collegiate blurb writers must aim for - 9th July
 * costume drama drowns in strings'' - In 1995 the Danish directors Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg drew up what they described as a Vow of Chastity, a list of ten cinematic commandments which were intended to purify film-making and focus all the energies of the film-maker on story and performance - 2nd July
 * find high art in low places'' - Why is it that our imaginations are policed so much more vigilantly when engaged in video games than with any other form of fiction? - 25th June
 * no gold in the Games, Danny'' - The week in culture - 11th June
 * a Carrie on: will we ever agree?'' - Another week, another cinematic misogyny row - 4th June
 * in search of the title'' - Anyone who's ever done a jigsaw or a crossword will know that there's an odd psychological moment when you finally work out a difficult clue or place the last piece - 28th May
 * to craft art from decoration'' - I found myself wondering about the status of the decorative the other day - 21st May
 * lives in a public muddle'' - The creator of Glee, Ryan Murphy (hallowed be his name), has apparently called for a boycott of Newsweek magazine over a recent column by one of its writers - 14th May
 * merit in pretension'' - An interesting moment occurred during my tour of Artangel's latest project, a few days ago - 7th May
 * artists had the hang of it'' - If you like drapery you're going to have a ball at the British Museum's new exhibition of Italian Renaissance Drawings - 30th April
 * hear it for the theme tune'' - the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences are contemplating dropping the Emmy Award for the Best TV Theme Tune - 23rd April
 * artist's dream home'' - 9th April
 * a cop out to attack critics'' - 2nd April
 * pious politics of the quilt'' - 26th March
 * – who needs it?'' - 'There's a lot of grimness out there," said the TV producer Daisy Goodwin earlier this week, complaining about the literary miserablism she'd encountered as the chair of this year's Orange Prize for Fiction jury - 19th March
 * bitter ending'' - In what circumstances is it acceptable for a work of art to cheat us? - 12th March
 * rides to remember'' - Like a fairground ghost ride a horror movie or a filmed ghost story can control to a large degree what you look at and when - 5th March
 * miss the shock of the new'' - It's traditional to adopt a knowingly superior attitude to the first English reviewers of Ibsen's Ghosts – The Daily Telegraph's apoplectic response having a place of honour when it comes to furious fulmination - 26th February
 * colour of muddy'' - The idea of a painter's "palette" – meaning the chromatic range that you associate with a particular artist – has always struck me as one of those slightly hazardous bits of aesthetic vocabulary - 19th February
 * get cute with me'' - You enter a gallery and are confronted by the startling sight of a three-year-old boy apparently balancing a life-size polar bear on his nose - 12th February
 * mother of all villains'' - Mo'Nique is, apparently, a "lock" for the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. Having seen her performance in Precious I'm not inclined to disagree - 5th February
 * you talking to me?'' - It's slightly odd, when you think about it, that we expect to be ignored in the theatre. We're the reason the damn thing is happening, after all - 29th January
 * good play has no sell-by date'' - Watching the current revival of John Guare's Six Degrees of Separation the other night I found myself thinking about the durability of plays - 22nd January
 * almost famous'' - I've been encountering a lot of famous fictional people recently - 15th January
 * cold comforts of snow'' - I can't imagine what can have prompted it but I found myself thinking about paintings of snow the other day - 8th January
 * over a new leaf'' - Unusually, I already know what I'm going to be doing with my spare time this year – all of it, not to mention alarming stretches of time that couldn't reasonably be described as spare at all - 1st January



Articles: 2009

 * art exceeds evolution'' - The evolutionary theory of art and literature continues to simmer nicely, the latest bubble to reach the lip of the pan being Brian Boyd's book On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition and Fiction - 18th December
 * irritating fade to black'' - To listen to some people talk, you'd think that people never got irritated with art - 4th December
 * joy of a short story'' - In The Devil’s Dictionary Ambrose Bierce defined the novel as “a short story padded”. It’s a little self-serving as a definition this - 27th November
 * about as good as it gets'' - Goodness, notoriously, writes white – that is, it won't show up on the page. Evil, no problem at all – the ink flowing black and creating a contrast so sharp that you could read it from across the room - 20th November
 * very model of a modern museum'' - I don't quite know how I'd managed to avoid the Ashmolean Museum all my life, but until just the other day I had - 13th November
 * good to be strung along'' - There was a brief theatrical vogue, some years ago now, for travelling toys - 6th November
 * time for tough love at the Tate'' - I tend to think of Bullets Over Broadway when I hear about collaborative artworks, Woody Allen's 1994 comedy being a near-perfect parable of the ruthlessness necessary for high artistic achievement - 23rd October
 * a film is not a film'' - When the Cannes organisers invited Disney/ Pixar to present Up as the opening film of the 2009 festival they made history - 16th October
 * with the Midas touch'' - Did you know?" boasts ENO in a bulletin about Turandot, "English National Opera bought all the gold silk of its type available in the UK... for use on the set" - 9th October
 * smiley face of extinction'' - Walking round the British Museum's Moctezuma exhibition the other day I found myself thinking about the Mitchell and Webb sketch about the anxious Nazi - 2nd October
 * to bring death to life'' - You wait for years for a good corpse-sniffing description to come along and then two arrive at once - 25th September
 * art of the recession'' - What will unemployment do for art? In the case of the Lehman employees, reported on in this paper earlier this week, the answer was relatively straightforward - 18th September
 * word on the street art'' - There's a proposal coming up before Bristol City Council shortly that local citizens should be allowed to vote on whether graffiti – or street art – should be power-hosed or preserved - 11th September
 * we vote for poets?'' - Bad luck. If you haven't already voted in the BBC's Nation's Favourite Poet poll you're now disenfranchised - 4th September
 * lean times for the arts'' - the chairman of the British Museum, Niall FitzGerald, was reported as saying that it would be a "catastrophe" if the museum's plans for an extension, which depended on a big IOU from the government, had to be cancelled - 31st July
 * confuse DIY with art'' - I've been struck by sheer craftsmanship a couple of times recently in an exhibition – a quality that we don't expect to see in an art gallery any more, at least not in the sense that it might be the raison d'être for going in the first place - 24th July
 * thou goest, I will go'' - The joint death of Sir Edward and Lady Downes was described in a variety of ways in the press coverage of their decision to end their lives together - 17th July
 * open space to remember'' - We wanted it to be user-friendly if you like, said one of those bereaved by the 7/7 bombings, giving an interview to the BBC about the permanent memorial to the dead, which was unveiled in Hyde Park this week - 10th July
 * ironic demise of satire'' - Thirty-eight years ago, give or take a couple of months, Peter Cook and Nicholas Luard opened The Establishment Club in Greek Street, London; a nightclub which has a reasonable claim to be the most influential after-hours dive of the last century - 3rd July
 * up, stand up for your art'' - The Week In Culture - 19th June
 * Sutcliffe: Baseball: a view from the boundary'' - It might sound a bit perverse to describe Sugar as a Test match film, but bear with me and I'll try and explain - 12th June
 * captured imagination'' - I don't know whether you've helped contribute to J D Salinger's legal fund, but I know I have - 5th June
 * work is it anyway?'' - I do enjoy a good attribution row, and the one currently smouldering in Italy over the authorship of a wooden sculpture of Christ is a connoisseur's item - 29th May
 * Why less involved is more'' - Is there any theatrical form in which the gap between theory and practice is as great as that in the promenade performance? - 22nd May
 * for the silly old devil'' - Prince Charles has been talking about architecture again – and I think it would be unseemly to splutter, however strong the temptation is - 15th May
 * Sutcliffe: To hell with art, look at that brawl'' - the story that two German academics had advanced the theory that Van Gogh never actually cut off his own ear had no trouble finding page space earlier this week - 8th May
 * matter of facts in fiction'' - To the countless dualities with which we attempt to shape the chaos of the world into a more manageable form I would like to add another. You can divide readers into people who love the whaling bits in Moby Dick and people who find them a tedious ordeal - 1st May
 * parking lot in modern mythology'' - I've occasionally fantasised about compiling a book called 95 Theses - 24th April
 * method in their madness'' - I found myself wondering the other day why portraits are so blandly noncommittal. The fact that they are, I realised, was the explanation for the faintly sinking feeling I get when I'm about to go in to a portrait exhibition - 17th April
 * Modernist hits Baroque bottom'' - Of all the museums in London I think the Victoria and Albert is the one where I have most often felt a spasm of political rage. On the face of it this might seem a little odd - 10th April
 * statue to Jade isn't a bad idea'' - The Daily Mirror reported the other day that Jade Goody may be honoured with a statue in Bermondsey. Pleasingly this was picked up and reported in an Indian online paper as "Jade Goody to be venerated with a statue near her childhood home", conjuring up an image of marigold-garlanded pilgrims coming to light candles before the shrine of the first martyr of reality television - 3rd April
 * Michelangelo get the nod?'' - Listening to a radio report recently about cultural commissions for the 2012 Olympics – replete with the usual careful hat-tips to regionality and public opinion and jury-led awards – I found myself idly wondering what would have happened if the same principles of accountability and representation had applied during the Renaissance - 27th March
 * good drama turn off the TV'' - I saw a terrific television play – the only minor catch being that it wasn't on telly at all, but in the basement of a Shepherd's Bush shopping centre - 20th March
 * architects need their sheds'' - The Cabanon was Corbusier's holiday shack, designed – according to his own account – in just 45 minutes and built as a kind of lean-to next to his favourite restaurant in the south of France - 13th March
 * fret, Pablo, you're a genius'' - the National Gallery's new exhibition Picasso: Challenging the Past - 6th March 2009
 * doom and happy endings'' - I don't think bookies are offering odds on whether the Tate Triennial will successfully introduce a new "ism" to art, but I'd be betting against it if they were - 13th February
 * beauty and perfect dross'' - Like a lot of people I felt for poor Sebastian Barry, whose £25,000 cheque for this year's Costa Prize came with an unexpected helping of humble pie - 6th February
 * acting, size isn't everything'' - 30th January
 * bites amid all the fakery'' - Let me make a public service announcement. The Wrestler is not about wrestling - 23rd January
 * fine art of Grand Theft Auto'' - If video games are to become an art, it won't be novels or films that provide the template – it may well be the gallery installation - 16th January
 * dance of Degas's pygmalion'' - Is it a doll or is it a sculpture? Sotheby's, I take it, is absolutely clear - 9th January



Articles: 2008

 * – and ridiculous'' - From Kenneth Branagh's Ivanov to John Sergeant's paso doble, the world of arts had plenty of surprises in 2008 - 19th December 2008
 * never did deal in reality, I suppose'' - 5th December 2008
 * poor Chekhov, it wasn't you'' - The Week In Culture - 28th November 2008
 * urbane power of Alistair Cooke'' - Once, many years ago, I found myself in the BBC's old New York offices - 21st November 2008
 * Titian that was no turn-on'' - 14th November 2008
 * holy child needs a crib sheet'' - 31st October 2008
 * Andrew a Renaissance man?'' - 24th October 2008
 * pressed against the glass'' - The week in culture - 17th October 2008
 * art does no credit to anyone'' - Something rather odd happens when you encounter a work of art nested inside a work of art - 10th October 2008
 * can have too much Rothko'' - I don't think I was the only person there experiencing an unsettling mismatch between the publicity for the show and the experience itself - 3rd October 2008
 * Rocket'' - Stalin's towering modern vision was old before its time - 26th September 2008
 * Tess needs a touch of 'BBC filth''' - One group of people always tend to get forgotten when it comes to modern adaptations of classic novels – and that's the people the book was actually written for - 19th September 2008
 * the Holocaust at your peril'' - I've encountered three examples of creative response to the Holocaust in the past few weeks, and I found myself sketching out a set of rules of engagement for any artist approaching the subject - 12th September 2008
 * voiceover that was the main feature'' - 5th September 2008
 * greatest freak show belongs to art'' - Ripley's Believe It Or Not! Museum,a place where you're supposed to go "urgh" and "oooh" - 29th August 2008
 * thought in a clear blue sky'' - 22nd August 2008
 * The longlist is all the Booker I ever want - 1st August 2008
 * Exclusive! Hadrian reveals all! - 25th July 2008
 * The Critic - If I can't park my bike, it's a design failure - 18th July 2008
 * Sexist, racist – and absolutely brilliant - 18th July 2008
 * How not to end it with a bang - 11th July 2008
 * No, TV is not the novel of today - 4th July 2008
 * If only they'd listened to me... - 27th June 2008
 * Why TV must look to its past - 13th June 2008
 * Film belongs in school. Discuss - 6th June 2008
 * I want acting, not accents - 30th May 2008
 * This is no job for a grown-up - ‘In the wilder extremes of Whomania, I’ve felt like the one person whose brain doesn’t respond to an alien hypnosis beam’ - 23rd May 2008
 * Bombs and bare-faced cheek - 16th May 2008
 * Spare me this theatrical piety - 9th May 2008
 * Now everyone can see the light - 2nd May 2008
 * The critical points of reviewers - 25th April 2008
 * Haunted by shadows of the past - 18th April 2008
 * A lost window of opportunity - 11th April 2008
 * Cooling towers? No, they're art - 4th April 2008
 * A taboo subject that shouldn't be - 21st March 2008
 * When architecture is pain relief - 14th March 2008
 * Why do characters have to be likeable? - 7th March 2008
 * It's on your iPod, but it's not telly - 22nd February 2008
 * Even bad culture can be worthwhile - 15th February 2008
 * Audiences can be infectious - 8th Febraury 2008
 * Sounds to enthral the eyes - 1st February 2008
 * When art unnerves me - 25th January 2008
 * When time loses its meaning - 18th January 2008
 * Spot the cultural Renaissance - 11th January 2008
 * Time for art to find its funny bone - 4th January 2008



The Independent:
Column ended July 2011

Column name: Social Studies

Remit/Info: Current affairs, contemporary culture and life

Section:

Role: Columnist

Pen-name:

Email: [mailto:t.sutcliffe@independent.co.uk t.sutcliffe@independent.co.uk]

Website: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/columnists/thomas-sutcliffe

Commissioning editor:

Day published: Tuesday

Regularity: Weekly

Column format: Lead and secondary item

Average length:



Articles: 2011

 * It's hard to be a critic when you love something - One of the commonest of all critical vices is reviewing the work you wish you'd experienced instead of the one you actually did - 21st July
 * A thirst for reading is needed – and I should know - My resolution was defeated by a swords-and-sorcery epic set in a primeval world before the invention of grammar - 13th December
 * media is TV's saviour, not its enemy'' - Watercooler moments won't wait until you're at the watercooler the next day - 16th August
 * the ref in a fight between faith and fact'' - The BBC shouldn't be impartial between proven knowledge and wilful ignorance - 26th July
 * should beware the tempting limelight'' - The all-party composition of committees demands that Buggins gets a turn too - 19th July
 * choice is making kids fat'' - Change4Life's PR company also works for PepsiCo, Mars and Pizza Hut - 12th July
 * K Rowling may not need an agent...'' - ...but for most writers they offer a judicious, sympathetic and candid eye- 5th July
 * jump to judge the rich – so why not the poor?'' - The question remains of what you do with clots who aren't interested in reciprocation or responsibility at all - 14th June
 * all benefit from a bit of desexualisation'' - Many 42-year-olds aren't "emotionally equipped" to deal with pornography - 7th June
 * shame in gossip – it shows we're human'' - I am curious about celebrities – because they're people - 31st May
 * a surprise more stars don't opt to be reclusive'' - Malick's detachment from the corporate business of movie-making doesn't do his status as auteur any harm - 24th May
 * the male equivalent of 'slut'?'' - Men are esteemed for their conquests, women are esteemed for fighting them off - 17th May
 * Apple we trust – but not the greedy banks'' - The banks exploited the trust that often exists between nonspecialist consumers and specialist suppliers - 10th May
 * is the dumbest solution for the BBC'' - The BBC is a public service and adds a real lustre to a CV - 3rd May
 * by the 'best-before' date'' - The more food-fearful we are, the more likely we are to rush back to the shops - 19th April
 * and the intolerable'' - The best defence against the offensive may be restrained indifference - 12th April
 * believe what you read in headlines ...'' - Do we even have a political culture that allows for intelligent discussion anymore? - 5th April
 * did the Big Society turn into Big Brother?'' - The academic community is already maddened by having to fill in "impact statements" - 29th March
 * Twitter, and a step into the unknown'' - I didn't much want to be a follower, but I even less wanted to have any - 22nd March
 * fairytale survey that became a work of fiction'' - Fairytales can offer a safe space in which to explore children's darker fears - 15th March
 * addicted to the Andy McNab factor'' - The special forces soldiers at the centre of this foreign affairs cock-up deserve our praise - 8th March
 * out, office bosses – you could topple'' - Do the sovereign virtues of democracy break down when miniaturised? - 1st March
 * don't like it when others like what we like'' - A group that plays Wembley can't be the same as a group that plays the local pub - 22nd February
 * marriage is not undermining'' - Why are its opponents so obsessed by sex and so little concerned with love? - 15th February
 * is the word Cameron wants'' - The only way to make the system fair is to make it equally unfair to all - 8th February
 * not to beat gang culture, whatever that is'' - It is easy to imagine that a "gang injunction" might become a test of gang loyalty - 1st February
 * comedy guide to anti-Islamic prejudice'' - Comedians know you can take a short cut to a laugh by way of a received opinion - 25th January
 * are these 'Edwardian' fathers?'' - In one respect Nick Clegg went too far back when groping for a way to describe our current paternity leave arrangements - 18th January
 * is the last thing bankers care about'' - "Banker bashing" is the blunt instrument we wield in the absence of a more intelligently focused one from politicians - 11th January



Articles: 2010

 * wouldn't want kids forced to worship'' - This part of the Education Act is widely ignored and probably unenforceable - 28th December
 * anyone 'owns' the Queen's head, it's us'' - Why is the Queen letting her image be used as a deal-sweetener? - 21st December
 * we change the crime to fit the story'' - We want life to have significance – and so we're eager for details that make sense of the senseless - 14th December
 * awkward truth about tax avoiders'' - There's a perspective from which we're all fat cats, not just Sir Philip Green - 7th December
 * comes to us all – and very useful it is too'' - Our deaths in the abstract have a social utility. They make space for those behind us - 30th November
 * hatred for NPR tells us about America'' - From a British perspective it's quite hard to see NPR as a hotbed of dogmatic socialism - 23rd November
 * salmon, some things are better wild'' - The British Government would be wise to resist the temptation to get our intangibles on the list - 16th November
 * best dramas don't choose who to offend'' - The last three decades have seen a considerable expansion of the empire of the unsayable - 9th November
 * fools know the meaning of bravery'' - Have modern firefighters had their hands tied by the paperwork, or are we all less brave than we once were? - 2nd November
 * the ornament business owes to Hirst'' - 26th October
 * the unborn have rights too?'' - Project Prevention is about preventing children being born to drug addicts - 19th October
 * are you worried over the terror alerts? Or merely anxious?'' - This isn't intelligence itself but just the window-dressing for it - 5th October
 * I be bribed to stay healthy?'' - Anyone who requires an incentive to persuade them not to eat themselves to death is, by definition, not sufficiently committed to changing their health behaviours - 28th September
 * tax dodgers by their proper name'' - I'd guess there are vastly more tax avoiders in the country than there are benefit frauds - 21st September
 * Muslims collude in the pastor's scheme'' - Pastor Jones' only power lay in the predictable volatility of indignant Muslims - 14th September
 * morality is a moveable feast'' - Japan have stretched the loophole so far that you can get a humpback through it - 7th September
 * lament these fine lexicographers'' - This news shouldn't be taken as a sign of cultural decay, but of metamorphosis - 31st August
 * power and missiles don't mix'' - How entertaining you find "The Striker" depends on how close you live to Iran - 24th August
 * speed cameras a flash in the pan?'' - The motorist parks on a zebra-crossing so he can buy the children a croissant - 27th July
 * self-regard of the peace vigil'' - There comes a point when being a lone voice comes to have its own corrupting allure - 20th July
 * people can live without the internet'' - When I asked him whether he had email he replied, in affable tones, "Don't be daft" - 13th July
 * baffles the godly – again'' - Social Studies: I imagine Hitchens needs a laugh – and that these reactions will give him one - 6th July
 * in school isn't all fun and games'' - I hope that nobody gets too carried away by the idea that competitive sports are necessarily good for children - 29th June
 * littering that junk mail forces on us'' - Does a leaflet actually have to hit the floor before the subtle legal transformation between advertising and litter takes place? - 22nd June
 * the snoopers be snooped upon'' - If the state feels entitled to film us, we should be entitled to film it - 8th June
 * societies need not let prisoners vote'' - We all have an interest in making the route back to the straight and narrow as broad and attractive as possible - 1st June
 * together in the same train carriage'' - First-class travel isn't a perk – they insist – it's an aid to operating efficiency - 25th May
 * a rich man's car says about him'' - Chris Evans can have his million pound car - with licence plates reading "1D10T" - 18th May
 * mere beauty enough?'' - You might say that high fashion isn't ready to take its Aborigines neat - 11th May
 * should never be OK to hit children'' - Being hit by a hand you know doesn't hurt less than being hit by a hand you don't - 27th April
 * grows into a man with the confidence to interrupt first'' - The terms of political trade were altered dramatically in the first debate. Last night did nothing to restore the old order - 23rd April
 * that don't run so deep'' - Social Studies: Proximity rubs the labels off strangers and lets you see they're not that strange after all - 20th April
 * it was a job interview in front of the nation, the vacancy's still open'' - "It will disappoint you and it will disappoint many people but we have come to the end of our debating time," said Alastair Stewart, wrapping up Britain's first television leader's debate - 16th April
 * life lesson all children need to learn'' - I momentarily turned into Norman Tebbit over the weekend - 6th April
 * papal tone of petulance is shameful'' - The Pope's weekend address reveals that he still doesn't understand what went wrong - 30th March
 * wrinklies really don't have it so bad'' - The lottery of birth date has given the current generation of over-50s unearned advantages - 23rd March
 * should not be allowed to shape law'' - How does Denise Fergus's experience qualifiy her to talk about jurisprudence? - 16th March
 * wonder our teenagers are so demanding'' - how far do today's schoolchildren really have to look to encounter a system which is impatient of slow development and careful nurture? - 9th March
 * how to protest against bank bonuses'' - What shall we do about bankers? It's a question that neither seems to be getting an answer nor going away, which is a most frustrating combination - 2nd March
 * it's yes to some drugs, no to others'' - Historically speaking any encounter between students and drugs has always resulted in a diminution of intelligence - 23rd February
 * should not just be an issue for women'' - I wonder whether the Haven rape centres will feel that they got value for money with the online opinion poll they commissioned to mark the 10th anniversary of the support service they offer for rape victims? - 16th February
 * would rather not see my future, thanks'' - A bus may get us long before we get to where science told us we were going - 9th February
 * to have confidence in the future'' - The great aphorist Ambrose Bierce defined an aphorism as "pre-digested wisdom" in his Devil's Dictionary - 2nd February
 * age-old problem that affects us all'' - So what's it to be then? A "martini and a medal", Martin Amis's deliberately provocative shorthand for street corner euthanasia booths, or "flexible working" until we drop in the traces? - 26th January
 * that can be guaranteed'' - Journalists know what an earthquake story looks like and will strive to deliver it - 19th January
 * is about a lot more than moving images'' - There was a lot of excitement about the third dimension at this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas – 12th January
 * would suit this panto villain nicely'' - Islam4UK's marchers should be treated like a light drizzle – an inconvenience - 5th January



Articles: 2009

 * out your kids – an official guide'' - You wonder what the thinking was behind the publication date of Parent Motivators, a pamphlet from the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills - 30th December
 * of the Year 2009: Culture'' - Shining lights in the post-crash gloom - 23rd December
 * fine to keep some things in the closet'' - It was a good weekend for the morality of openness and candour. First of all the fearsomely masculine Welsh rugby player Gareth Thomas revealed he was gay - 22nd December
 * funniest shows leave out laughter'' - 15th December
 * dignity in this pretence of unity'' - These proposals are the sexual equivalent of the Nuremberg Laws - 1st December
 * we pay double to save the bookshop?'' - A civilized city without bookshops – or without enough bookshops – struck me as a contradiction in terms - 24th November
 * de Jour's over-complicated life'' - If it was so enjoyable and so well paid, why did she stop back in 2004? - 17th November
 * massacre that may or may not be art'' - What a fuss over the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - 11th November
 * be clear about what we're eating'' - It hasn't really been a good few days for this Government, when it comes to the relationship between simple scientific facts and public health - 3rd November
 * time to admit flying is a luxury'' - Forgive me Gaia for I have sinned – or rather I'm about to - 20th October
 * fair trials in the court of public opinion'' - I heard the phrase "the Court of Public Opinion" quite a few times yesterday morning – prompted by interviews and discussions anticipating the fact that MPs were all going to get a letter from Sir Thomas Legg and a lot of them weren't going to like it - 13th October
 * an image and the more it is noticed'' - by the time I got to Tate Modern's new show "Pop Life" it had, in the dictionary definition of that word, been put in an appropriate form for publication, at least as far as the police were concerned - 6th October
 * busts do little to crack the problem'' - Is there anything more depressing than a showcase drugs bust? - 29th September
 * stop asking if my meal is OK'' - A scene from modern life: I'm in a burger bar, one of those chains that charge the gastronomically snobbish a modest premium so they can pretend that they're not actually eating in a fast-food restaurant - 22nd September
 * culture... that's so middle class'' - "It pains me that working-class culture is sneered at and ridiculed. Fifty years ago it was seen as noble and dignified." This is Jon Cruddas, in yesterday's paper, answering a reader's question as to whether he thinks of himself as a class warrior - 15th September
 * A dead honest approach to passing away'' - Jonathan Holmes' play Katrina – at the Bargehouse near Oxo Tower Wharf on London's South Bank – ends with a funeral ceremony, a New Orleans send-off for Virgil, whose dead body has been floated across the flooded city by his devoted partner Beatrice - 8th September
 * that hits all the right notes'' - I think the best thing I've seen recently was a label. It read "Please Play" and it was painted in yellow letters on the scuffed concrete of the Roundhouse in London - 14th August
 * Moore has got it wrong'' - Can you condemn an institution and simultaneously work for it? - 11th August
 * is not the end of the matter'' - You suggested some fine examples of resonant last lines in novels. So much so, in fact, that I began to doubt the general truth I'd proposed, which was that they are inherently less memorable than openings - 7th August
 * a waste of police time – and mine'' - I became a victim of crime last week. Twice. And in virtually identical circumstances. I don't know whether it's anything to do with the end of the school term, but we've suffered a rash of car break-ins in our particular patch of north London recently - 4th August
 * a waste of police time – and mine'' - What was odd was how apologetic and tentative the police were - 4th August
 * poor use of space on issues of astronomy'' - We've all grown used to the spiralling inflation of the press release but even so I was a little startled when I encountered in concrete fact a new exhibition at the Science Museum which the institution's press release had described on paper as "major" - 28th July
 * is in large part a social virtue'' - I don't have very high hopes for the Honesty Lab, an online research project set up by a group of academics in order to assist judges to gauge shifting public attitudes as to what counts as culpable (or punishable) dishonesty - 21st July
 * entered a rat maze – and I was scared'' - I 'm going to do something irritating, which is to recommend an experience that you can't have - 14th July
 * are owned by the things that we own'' - How many of us, I wonder, felt a twinge of envy when reading that the artist Jasper Joffe plans to sell absolutely everything he possesses and start again from scratch? - 7th July
 * tell me the Queen's a bargain'' - You can see what Sir Alan Reid, the Keeper of the Privy Purse, had in mind when he broke down the annual cost of the monarchy to a per capita basis in presenting the Royal Family's accounts to us yesterday. Only 69p a year for all that history, we were supposed to think - 30th June
 * a plot there can be no revolution'' - It's a mildly startling fact that the first moonwalk is now less distant from the Wall Street Crash than it is from the present day - 23rd June
 * unwelcome third party in literary fantasy'' - As a way of attracting attention to a retumescent organ, Kate Copstick's suggestion that women don't write as well about sex as men was pretty effective - 16th June
 * uneasy conscience as we watch Ms Boyle'' - It is hardly news, after all, that television programmes like Britain's Got Talent and Pop Idol are ready to utilise the mentally fragile for reasons of public entertainment - 2nd June
 * you were an MP, would you do differently?'' - A phrase we've been hearing a lot of over the last few days is, "If it was us". Indignant constituents have been using it when reporters ask them to comment on the expense claims of their MPs: "If it was us we would be in court", they point out, or "If it was us we'd be in prison" - 19th May
 * - an essential part of justice'' - There was an interesting exchange on the Today programme the other day when Vernon Coaker, the minister for policing, crime and security, found himself defending the Government's baby-steps response to the European court's ruling on the legality of the DNA database - 12th May
 * not scared after my brush with swine flu'' - I sneezed yesterday – not an event that I would generally feel worthy of recording in print, but which was attended on this occasion by a mild curiosity - 5th May
 * over experience in theatre of war'' - Addressing the annual dinner of the Royal Asiatic Society in 1908 Lord Curzon predicted that if the society still existed in "50 or a 100 years, Afghanistan will be as vital and as important a question as it is now" - 28th April
 * Night's Television: The Apprentice and The Speaker'' - (review) - 23rd April
 * Madonna put Edward VII in the shade'' - It's intriguing, I think, that an exhibition of early colour photographs of Edwardian grandees should get newspaper exposure hard on the heels of a widely disseminated sepia photograph of a contemporary VIP - 21st April
 * respect what you have paid for?'' - Deference has had it pretty rough for the last 100 years – and even rougher in the last 20. A quality that was already finding it difficult to make a case for itself in an age of universal suffrage and egalitarianism found itself undermined even further by the notion that we should instinctively think of ourselves as customers rather than citizens - 7th April
 * time we redefined the word 'adult''' - Odd phrase "adult movies" – and one that's only been with us, according to the OED, since 1958, where the first citation comes from a New Musical Express small ad offering "unusual adult photo sets" - 31st March
 * we are all haunted by religion'' - What a striking choice of words the Archbishop of Canterbury made when he said, on Sunday, that he believed we were "living in a country that is uncomfortably haunted by the memory of religion" - 24th March
 * expect the worst of our Secret Service'' - I don't suppose many people will be shocked by the increasing evidence that there was British collusion in the torture of British detainees. Or more precisely – since the word "shocked" packs together a sense of moral outrage with the sense of being startled – not many people will have been surprised - 17th March
 * carefully chosen words from Adams'' - It was "wrong and counter-productive", declared Gerry Adams when asked to comment on the murders of two soldiers at the Massereene Army base, nothing about that form of words was uncalculated – and the Sinn Fein president will have crafted his response as carefully as a poet - 10th March
 * lesson in drinking from the Scots'' - Not for the first time when it comes to a public health initiative the executive north of the border has left that in the south looking politically timid - 3rd March
 * on pay can keep salaries down'' - Here’s a simple question: is the public disclosure of top salaries more likely to drive prices up or down? - 24th February
 * You will be in this drugs debate...'' - Professor David Nutt, head of the Advisory Council on Drugs Misuse, got himself into trouble over the weekend for suggesting that there was "not much difference between horse-riding and ecstasy" when it came to an assessment of potential social harm - 10th February
 * from heaven for us 'selfish' adults'' - An unexpected snowfall (and is there any other kind in Britain, however accurate the forecast has been?) is better than a public holiday. It's a furlough from routine that comes without the downsides of Christmas or Easter - 3rd February
 * time ease the pain of the Holocaust?'' - it seems inevitable that our emotional connection will eventually undergo an evolution. And by "we" I don't mean you and me, but those generations that follow us - 27th January
 * not that easy to talk when your lips are blue and barely moving'' - "Well – it's not often that we can say that we are witnesses to the making of history," said Huw Edwards, introducing BBC 1's live coverage of the inauguration speech - 21st January
 * to do with the ashes of a loved one?'' - My father's ashes sit on the sideboard with some bottles of single malt - 20th January
 * a branch of Woolworths for posterity'' - I popped in to one of my local Woolworths last week, visiting not as a customer but as a kind of deathbed hoverer - 13th January
 * can't judge the past by today's standards'' - there's little doubt that if Oscar Wilde was a contemporary playwright his predilection for teenage boys would effectively guarantee the end of his career - 6th January

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Articles: 2008

 * entering the age of voter madness'' - this weekend turned out to be a kind of Super Tuesday of telephone voting - 16th December 2008
 * potential for tyranny is there in any era'' - had the internet existed in Hitler's day, he would have made damn sure that he controlled what was accessible on it, just as the Chinese government endeavours to police its computer users - 9th December 2008
 * on is not the way to provide news'' - Twitter, if you're not familiar with it, is a form of micro-blogging, which allows users to send very short updates on what they're doing to anyone interested to receive them and last week several "Tweets" – as the Twitter postings are called – started appearing in the BBC's coverage - 2nd December 2008
 * cookers rock – and casseroles roll'' - 25th November 2008
 * Reg - but not 'On the Buses''' - The show's misogyny was almost through-composed - 18th November 2008
 * is no excuse for murder'' - 11th November 2008
 * all called it: this was definitely historic'' - Jeremy Vine conjured up a strange virtual sewage pipe to explain electoral college votes - 5th November 2008
 * Sands and 007 united in martyrdom'' - 28th October 2008
 * knife edge between real horror and mere bravura'' - 21st October 2008
 * research needs health warnings'' - 14th October 2008
 * simpler way to keep our hospitals clean'' - I would like to name one of the guilty parties – me - 7th October 2008
 * – courtesy of the BBC'' - It isn't every day you hear someone issuing death threats on the Today programme, but yesterday morning's report on an arson attack on the home of the London publisher of The Jewel of the Medina, included one remark that struck me as coming close to an incitement to murder - 30th September 2008
 * don't we take computer games more seriously?'' - 23rd September 2008
 * these bigots think their daughters are tarts, or just other people's?'' - on opposition to the cervical cancer jab - 9th September 2008
 * food deals fuelling the obesity epidemic'' - 2nd September 2008
 * sport is good – but it's not for everyone'' - 26th August 2008
 * politics of failure'' - If only it was as easy to lose in politics as it is in sport. It isn't much fun in either field, naturally, but the singular humiliation of political failure needs acknowledgement if we're to understand how fiercely (and sometimes violently) politicians strive to keep it at bay - 19th August 2008
 * All human life is just a 999 call away - 29th July 2008
 * There's not a moment that can't be wasted - 22nd July 2008
 * Knife crime... sensitivity or broad indifference? - 15th July 2008
 * Would the BMA deny Bond his martini? - 8th July 2008
 * The perilous joys of middle-aged sex - 1st July 2008
 * What's wrong if these cameras stop crime? - 24th June 2008
 * Here's how to turn up the heat on Tesco - 10th June 2008
 * Teenage drinking... it's hard to think straight - 3rd June 2008
 * Concentrate the mind with carbon credits - 27th May 2008
 * The good soul of Brecht? I don't see it - 20th May 2008
 * Atheists don't have voids they ache to fill - 13th May 2008
 * The dead shouldn't have the last word - 29th April 2008
 * Why sexism works in Hillary's favour - 22nd April 2008
 * Sorry, but this is just a drop in the ocean... - 15th April 2008
 * What I learned during my time in the ranks - 8th April 2008
 * I hate parking tickets. And I'm a hypocrite... - 1st April 2008
 * The cinematic battle for hearts and minds - 18th March 2008
 * Let those without sin cast the first stone... - 11th March 2008
 * Are children really growing up faster? - 4th March 2008
 * Britain should try US-style primaries here - 27th February 2008
 * How about a permit to drink alcohol? - 19th February 2008
 * Want to be happy? Expect a bit less of life - 12th February 2008
 * Perhaps we should silence the bells, too? - 5th February 2008
 * I very much doubt we'll miss Britannia - 29th January 2008
 * Can't afford free range? Let them eat chickpeas - 22nd January 2008
 * Have a heart and sign up to organ donation - 15th January 2008
 * The deadly results of misguided pride - 8th January 2008
 * Agree on a resolution, and change the world - 1st January 2008

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News & updates:
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References:
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Links:

 * The Guardian: obituaries
 * New Statesman: articles
 * Prospect magazine: articles