“Over three decades [he] became a major figure in describing and documenting the city’s cultural transformation from regional byway to the national main stage.”

Responding to the pounding she took in the media last year for misunderstood remarks about the former Kate Middleton, Mantel says, “I do think the level of public debate is debased. To know how far it is debased – well, you have to be on the receiving end of a hate campaign like that to […]

The two authors – novelist/essayist Kincaid and longform journalist Weschler – join scholar Rich Blint and radio host Brian Lehrer to talk about Baldwin’s life and his ideas on love and race. (audio)

In addition to being a busy ensemble singer and marketing professional (as well as custodian of a magnificent moustache), Dinsmore co-created and administered The Crossing, a professional chamber choir which, over only eight years, has become one of Philadelphia’s best ensembles of any kind.

“Given his work ethic and the fact that it’s only 4pm, Marriner could probably conduct a quick opera and record a string quartet before the day’s out. Doubtless there’s more coming from the Academy of you-know-where conducted by you-know-who.”

“Mr. Kaiser, who steps down as president of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on Sept. 1, will become co-chairman of IMG Artists, the performing arts management agency, IMG announced on Monday.”

“So many of King’s tweets contained spoilers that the author began to capitalise the film, TV show and books he was exposing.”

“Mr. Ho, who was of Chinese descent, considered himself a ‘popular avant-gardist.’ He was inspired by the Black Arts movement of the 1960s and by the ambitious, powerful music of African-American bandleaders including Duke Ellington, John Coltrane, Sun Ra and especially Charles Mingus. But he rejected the word jazz, which he considered a pejorative term […]

Or, how a soon-to-be-former German professor (he gave up on getting tenure) acquired more than 67,000 followers for his “compendium of utopian negation”. (Sample: “The Tickle Me Werner Herzog doll I got for Christmas only laughs when I tell him the universe isn’t utterly indifferent to our pain.”)

“When they suggested Judi Dench, I couldn’t believe it. I nearly fell off my chair. She’s famous all over the world, you know! I was over the moon. A lot of my friends thought I’d gone soft, because they didn’t believe that it was true. I was so glad to be able to say, ‘Actually, […]

“LBJ was certainly aware of the vagaries of power. He believed that it was important to do everything you could and to use everyone around you in order to further your goals. But at the end of the day there would come a reckoning and power would recede and you would lose your effectiveness. And […]

“In his log-cabin retreat Halliwell-Phillipps kept, and obsessively curated, his huge collection of ‘Shakespearean rarities’. This consisted of ‘about fifteen hundred separate articles’ – a cornucopia of manuscript papers and parchments, early quarto editions, play-bills, portraits, maps and curios carved from the sacred mulberry tree.”

Kamila Shamsie: “I am deeply critical of American writers for their total failure to engage with the American empire. It’s a completely shocking failure.”

“When Stephen Jay Carlton was hired on July 1, 2009, at an annual salary of $75,000 plus full medical benefits, the balance sheet for the Symphony at the fiscal year ending June 2009 showed about $500,000 in endowment funds with close to $10,000 in the checking account. On Sept. 20, 2013, when the alleged fraud […]

“She was best known for the fictional diaries of Adrian Mole, who began confiding his deepest desires and ambitions in the Secret Diary of Adrian Mole 13 3/4 in 1982. His teenage years were recounted in the Growing Pains of Adrian Mole and further novels dealt with married life and middle age.”

An author and poet in her own right, she was “a central figure in a family of prominent American writers whose most notable member was her husband, John, with whom she had a relationship as complex as those he wrote about.”

“A faded fragment of papyrus known as the ‘Gospel of Jesus’s Wife,’ which caused an uproar when unveiled by a Harvard Divinity School historian in 2012, has been tested by scientists who conclude in a journal published on Thursday that the ink and papyrus are very likely ancient, and not a modern forgery.”

“This is the most fulfilling thing I’ve ever done,” says Richard Serra, talking about his latest work. “It’s a piece that I’d really like to be seen, and I don’t know if it will.”

The 87-year-old Nobel laureate “returned to his Mexico City home on Tuesday after a week-long hospitalization for pneumonia, but officials said he remains in ‘delicate’ condition.”

“We put stuff in there that was not really that good, but fortunately there were a couple of gleaming things that everyone remembers while they’ve forgotten the dross. … People forgive you the things that don’t work”

“Every one of us who works in this field becomes part of this fabric we call history. You want to know how you connect with the past but also how you connect with the future. Therefore it becomes more and more important to work with young people.”

“In its coverage of Mickey Rooney, there’s one thing the media have generally danced past, and it happens to be the role that has cast the longest shadow out of a career of thousands: His performance as Mr. I.Y. Yunioshi in the classic 1961 film Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”

The beloved and widely-recorded singer was admired for his Bach and Handel and English art song, but he was best known for his work with Benjamin Britten, who wrote a number of roles for him.

Fox has promised it will reveal the “barely-known first act” of Hirst’s life, with the artist’s “witty style and northern edge”.

“None of us who knew and worked with Gerard will ever be the same. His visionary, always practical, and constantly generous presence enlivened each conversation, each rehearsal, each project. Perhaps more amazingly, many of Gerard’s rivals, critics, and adversaries will never be the same either.”

Julian Oliver: “Whether my work is placed in a gallery and intended as art is of little interest to me, but what I’ve found is that it doesn’t matter whether I call it art. Others will do it for me, so I may as well take advantage of what those spaces have to offer.”

“As adept at comedy as drama and an excellent singer and dancer, Rooney was regarded as the consummate entertainer. During a prolific career on stage and screen that spanned eight decades (‘I’ve been working all my life, but it seems longer,’ he once said), he was nominated for four Academy Awards.”

“One of the last men who could credibly claim the title of Manhattan’s last bohemian had not only decided he was quitting the city, he also figured he could find a richer existence 4,000 miles away — in the Austrian Alps.”

“A rugged, weather-beaten figure who was reared and educated in privilege — an advantage that left him uneasy, he said — Mr. Matthiessen was a man of many parts: littérateur, journalist, environmentalist, explorer, Zen Buddhist, professional fisherman and, in the early 1950s, undercover agent for the Central Intelligence Agency in Paris.”

“Born into the East Coast establishment, Matthiessen ran from it, and in the running became a novelist, a C.I.A. agent, a founder of The Paris Review, author of more than 30 books, a naturalist, an activist and a master in one of the most respected lineages in Zen.”