Thomas Sutcliffe

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Tom Sutcliffe: The cold comforts of snow

Friday, 8 January 2010

I can't imagine what can have prompted it but I found myself thinking about paintings of snow the other day.

Tom Sutcliffe: Outrage would suit this panto villain nicely

Tuesday, 5 January 2010

It isn't a palatable truth but Anjem Choudary, the leader of Islam4UK, has contrived a genuinely tricky double-bind with his plan to march through Wootton Bassett in commemoration of Muslims who have died in Afghanistan. Despite the disingenuous claim on the Today programme that his organisation, Islam4UK, would proceed with "the least disruption that we can", what Mr Choudary really seeks is maximum publicity and trouble and it's quite difficult, right now, to think of a way to deny him.

Tom Sutcliffe: Turn over a new leaf

Friday, 1 January 2010

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.

Tom Sutcliffe: Turfing out your kids – an official guide

Wednesday, 30 December 2009

You wonder what the thinking was behind the publication date of Parent Motivators, a pamphlet from the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills.

Tom Sutcliffe: It's fine to keep some things in the closet

Tuesday, 22 December 2009

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. Then Gerry Adams ... well, what exactly? ... "revealed", "acknowledged", "formally announced"? ... that his father, a prominent and admired Republican, had subjected some family members to emotional, physical and sexual abuse. Both of these stories neatly fit the template of our secular media confessional – offering a form of shriving that was seen to be good for the soul, not only of the confessor but of others in similar circumstances.

Tom Sutcliffe: Why art exceeds evolution

Friday, 18 December 2009

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.

Tom Sutcliffe: The funniest shows leave out laughter

Tuesday, 15 December 2009

I was pleased that Outnumbered did so well at the 2009 British Comedy Awards – with that faintly mysterious sense of triumph that treats really liking a comedy show as being somehow the same as having played a part in its creation. It's preposterous, of course, but it still can't entirely be suppressed - partly, I guess, because you automatically take the award as a recognition that your own funny bone is aligned in the right direction – whatever "right" happens to be. And in the case of Outnumbered I felt that a cause had been vindicated – the cause of inventive, observational and un-laugh-tracked comedy... the latter detail being a particular marker of modernity in television sitcom.

Tom Sutcliffe: That irritating fade to black

Friday, 4 December 2009

To listen to some people talk, you'd think that people never got irritated with art.

Thomas Sutcliffe: No dignity in this pretence of unity

Tuesday, 1 December 2009

These proposals are the sexual equivalent of the Nuremberg Laws

Tom Sutcliffe: The joy of a short story

Friday, 27 November 2009

The Week In Culture

Tom Sutcliffe: Should we pay double to save the bookshop?

Tuesday, 24 November 2009

A civilized city without bookshops – or without enough bookshops – struck me as a contradiction in terms

Tom Sutcliffe: It's about as good as it gets

Friday, 20 November 2009

The Week In Culture

Tom Sutcliffe: The over-complicated life of Belle de Jour

Tuesday, 17 November 2009

I wonder how many men looked at the photograph of Dr Brooke Magnanti – who outed herself the other day as the real Belle de Jour, blogger horizontale – and thought to themselves, "Yeah ... well I reckon I'd pay £300 for that". I know I did – and it's not because I'd pay £300 for that.

Tom Sutcliffe: The very model of a modern museum

Friday, 13 November 2009

The Week In Culture

Tom Sutcliffe: A massacre that may or may not be art

Wednesday, 11 November 2009

A few months ago the Mexican film-maker Guillermo Del Toro, the director of Pan's Labyrinth, gave an interview to Wired magazine in which he predicted that "in the next 10 years there will be an earthshaking Citizen Kane of games".

Tom Sutcliffe: It's good to be strung along

Friday, 6 November 2009

The Week In Culture

Tom Sutcliffe: Let's be clear about what we're eating

Tuesday, 3 November 2009

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. Their commitment to giving the people the facts doesn't apparently extend to giving them facts that might contradict current political orthodoxies. But they do have a modest opportunity this week to show themselves to be on the side of useful scientific intelligence. Tomorrow, the House of Commons debates a 10-Minute Rule Bill put forward by the Labour MP Helen Southworth, in which she calls for a legal requirement for a uniform system of food labelling on the front of packaged food.

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