The Stepford Wives (1972): Ira Levin

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★★★★

It is an unspecified time in the 1970s. Joanna Eberhart, a semi-professional photographer, moves with her husband Walter to the idyllic, sleepy town of Stepford. It’s the perfect antidote to their previous life in New York and an ideal place to bring up  their children Pete and Kim. And yet, progressive and independent Joanna notices that she doesn’t really fit in with her perfectly dressed, beautifully made-up neighbours. Keen to make an effort, she tries to form friendships while Walter joins the Men’s Association; but with two exceptions the other women in Stepford are too busy with domestic tasks to spare time for coffees, lunches and social trips.

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Metamorphosis: Titian 2012

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Metamorphosis: Titian

(National Gallery, London, until today)

Sometimes I get it wrong. Sometimes I jump to conclusions about what I will or won’t like and almost do myself out of the chance to see something interesting. This exhibition has been on since July, as an Olympic-related arts collaboration, and yet I hadn’t troubled to take a short bus journey to Trafalgar Square to see it. This is largely because I thought the point of the show was to reinterpret Titian’s paintings and, to be honest, I like Titian just as he is. In fact, having done my MA on Titian, I was rather annoyed at the implication that contemporary artists were somehow making him more relevant by transforming his works. However, I hold up my hands: I misunderstood.

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Bronze (2012)

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Chimera of Arezzo

(Royal Academy, London, until 9 December 2012)

Fate has a sense of humour. One of the things I would have loved to see in Sicily was the Dancing Satyr in Mazara del Vallo: the beautiful bronze which was pulled out of the Mediterranean by a fishing boat in 1998. Of course, with only five days on hand, we couldn’t trek across country simply for the sake of seeing one bronze statue, so I quietly added it to my list for my next visit. So imagine my surprise and delight this afternoon, when I stepped into the first room of the Royal Academy’s new exhibition, Bronze.

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Tyrant (2003): Valerio Massimo Manfredi

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★★

Enthusiastically recommended by our guide on holiday, this is one of only a handful of historical novels set in Sicily. I eagerly sought it out on my return, hoping to fill the gaps in my knowledge. Before our trip I’d scarcely heard of Dionysius the Elder or of Syracuse’s dominance of the Greek cities in Sicily, which proves that I need to reread Tom Holt’s Walled Orchard and Mary Renault’s Mask of Apollo, both of which touched on this period.

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The Land of the Leopard (Sicily)

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 Trinacria, Sicily

This is going to be a long one, because I’m bubbling over with enthusiasm. I’ve just returned from a marvellous week in Sicily with my parents, who had very kindly taken pity on me and invited me to join them on Voyages Jules Verne’s ‘Treasures of Sicily’ tour. This post therefore has two parts: the first focuses on Sicily itself and the places we visited, while the second part focuses on my experience of travelling with an organised group.

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From Paris: A Taste for Impressionism (2012)

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Renoir: Girl with a Fan

(Royal Academy, London, until 23 September 2012)

The current exhibition at the RA presents a selection of 19th-century French paintings from the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, MA. The marketing department clearly chose the title to focus on the most popular aspect of the show, but there are also works from the Barbizon School and a handful of Orientalist paintings at the end. The show’s main purpose is to give us a glimpse of the collecting taste of the Institute’s founders.

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A Day at the Paralympics 2012

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Paralympics: Simmonds

This summer in London has been incredible. We were initially all rather cynical about the Olympics, but swiftly found ourselves caught up in the fever, and became armchair experts on sports as diverse as distance running, cycling speed trials and dressage (I still can’t get over the fact that some horses have better musical timing than I do). Now the Olympics are done and dusted; the Paralympics have swept into view; and finally I had my chance to savour the atmosphere at first hand.

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The Taming of the Shrew (1590-2): William Shakespeare

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The Taming of the Shrew: William Shakespeare

★★★★½

(directed by Toby Frow; Globe Theatre, until 13 October 2012)

Another splendid evening at the Globe last night, although very different in character from Henry V a few weeks ago. Raucous, bawdy and lively, Toby Frow’s Shrew is rich with physical comedy and slapstick. It’s fantastic to watch something like this at the Globe, because more than ever you come to understand the vibrancy of theatre in Shakespeare’s day. The audience feeds off the exuberance of the actors, who in turn draw it back from them: to see a successful comedy in this theatre is to feel symbiosis in action.

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Gioconda (2011): Lucille Turner

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★★★

This was another purchase from Amazon’s Kindle sale. Initially I hesitated over buying it because Leonardo da Vinci is a subject particularly close to my heart. As a teenager, I read a lot about him (I still have at least sixteen books on my shelves) and I have yet to find any novel which gets him entirely right. Yet I keep looking, in the hope that one day I’ll stumble upon a book which does for him what The Agony and the Ecstasy did for Michelangelo. Sadly, this is not that book; although it certainly has its strengths.

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Resistance (2007): Owen Sheers

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★★★★

I’d probably never have read Resistance if Amazon hadn’t put the Kindle version on sale for 99p. At that level it seemed churlish to ignore a book which made such a splash a few years ago. The reason I hadn’t picked it up before was because I rarely venture into books about the Second World War. I’m not a great fan of war stories in general. Fortunately for me, this turned out to be an unexpectedly moving story about compassion, humanity and idealism rather than about war per se. However, having read other reviews on Amazon since finishing the book, I see that many people who bought it expecting a war story were underwhelmed by the fact that very little happens. After all, the resistance that underpins the novel is not the kind you might expect.

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