Thomas Sutcliffe
Tom Sutcliffe: Don't 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.
Recently by Thomas Sutcliffe
Tom Sutcliffe: 3D movies are all an illusion
Friday, 26 June 2009
Possibly the greatest 3D effect in cinema history dates from 1895 – the year that the Lumière brothers first started showing their short "actualit�s" to the French public.
Tom Sutcliffe: Without a plot there can be no revolution
Tuesday, 23 June 2009
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. I take it that this is one reason why I found watching Moonwalk One – Nasa's official "time capsule" film about the Apollo 11 mission – a faintly lowering experience. We naturally flinch from consigning the events of our childhood to book history and yet that is where, inexorably, the first moon landing is headed.
Thomas Sutcliffe: An unwelcome third party in literary fantasy
Tuesday, 16 June 2009
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. The Today programme immediately picked up the challenge, calling in Kathy Lette to repudiate the idea on yesterday's programme and here I am now, similarly goaded into mentioning the publication in question – The Erotic Review, which Copstick has just bought with her own money and will relaunch later in the month.
Tom Sutcliffe: Baseball: a view from the boundary
Friday, 12 June 2009
It might sound a bit perverse to describe Sugar as a Test match film, but bear with me and I'll try and explain.
Tom Sutcliffe: The captured imagination
Friday, 5 June 2009
I don't know whether you've helped contribute to J D Salinger's legal fund, but I know I have, having purchased at least one, and possibly two copies of The Catcher in the Rye in the last few years (it's a bit of a fixture on school reading lists). I've done my small bit, in other words, to keep sales of this classic of teenage angst ticking over at around 250,000 a year – an impressive figure given that its accumulated sales are said to be something like 65 million copies. And without that fact I don't think we'd have been reading about the latest Salinger lawsuit, brought against a mysterious Swedish writer, J D California, who has produced a sequel he calls 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye.
Thomas Sutcliffe: Our uneasy conscience as we watch Ms Boyle
Tuesday, 2 June 2009
It's been intriguing listening to the Prime Minister recently boasting – I don't think the word is too strong – about his "presbyterian conscience" and his "moral compass". On the Today programme yesterday he was at pains to remind us that as long ago as 2007 he'd been making noises about reform and that now it was vitally important to get down to the task as soon as possible. His manner even managed to suggest that Evan Davis was personally delaying the cleansing process by bothering him with impertinent questions.
Tom Sutcliffe: Whose work is it anyway?
Friday, 29 May 2009
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.
Tom Sutcliffe: If you were an MP, would you do differently?
Tuesday, 19 May 2009
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". It's a remark that neatly encapsulates the deep sense of unfairness that is one source of the public outrage about MP's expenses. It also reinforces a long-standing prejudice that politicians are a "them" – a species apart identifiable by their venality and double-dealing.
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