On my culture radar this month September 2025.

Art.

First up this week, a wonderful exhibition in Edinburgh.

Andy Goldsworthy | Fifty Years.

This retrospective is superb. I have long been interested in Goldsworthy, but this was far more interesting and engaging than I imagined, and I had pretty high hopes.

It’s a particular challenge to take the work of a land/nature-based artist and bring it indoors, but this whole show, which includes a surprising amount of site-specific work, is visceral, alive, fun, challenging and effective.

It’s only on until early November, but do try to visit because it is absolutely wonderful and will leave a lasting impression.

Music.

You can tell that Christmas is on the horizon because greatest hits collections have just emerged by two of the best British bands of that last quarter century.

#1.

Hot Chip. Joy in Repetition.

Career retrospectives, or greatest hits, are something of an extraneous commodity in the age of digital music. But this is a good reminder of how wonderful a band Hot Chip are. The drole title is taken from the lyrics to their early masterpiece Over and Over.

Hot Chip are one of the most original, melodic and cheerful British bands of the last 25 years, Here are 16 tracks of joy and tenderness that are full of killer melodies.

#2.

Metronomy. Greatest Hits.

Like Hot Chip, Metronomy are a great British band that have been making sophisticated and original music for over 25 years. This is a collection culled from their seven studio albums which embraces all of their quirks and their unusual ability to combine a distinctive sound with accessible pop music.

There is terrific new music this month, too.

Big Thief. Double Infinity.

Big Thief make lovely, fresh and nuanced folk rock. They formed in Brooklyn ten years ago and each album has seen their reputation and fanbase grow substantially. Next spring they will play to around 20,000 people in London alone.

Sometimes, for me, they’re a bit twee, perhaps too serious. But they have always been fantastic songwriters, and I think that this might be their best album yet; it feels at once muscular and fragile. Hidden deep under the surface there are riffs that will make U2 fans happy, while, all the time, the songs feel as if they might collapse inwards at any moment.

Blood Orange. Essex Honey.

Blood Orange is one of British musician Dev Hynes’s many musical projects. He is something of a songwriting gun-for-hire, chosen when major artists want a hint of street cred on their album; as such he has worked with Haim, Britney Spears, Kylie, Turnstile and Mariah Carey, to name but a few.

This is his fifth album as Blood Orange and while I don’t recommend it wholeheartedly, it is definitely bursting with original ideas and has some exceptional moments. Start with Countryside, and see what you think.

Bits and pieces from all of these albums and many other gems are on my playlist.

My Playlist

Books.

Book of the Month.

The Secret Painter by Joe Turner.

This is a beautiful book; funny, political, sad, uplifting and endlessly surprising.

It’s the true story of the author’s uncle who left school at 14 and worked various manual jobs in Warrington (apparently Britain’s least-culture-friendly town… I’m only the messenger) before retiring early due to arthritis. Outside work he was an enthusiastic boozer, a passionate lover of art and something of a man of mystery.

And, as it transpired after his death, he was a prolific painter of remarkable ability who quietly and capably recorded the people who surrounded him, from drinkers to pigeon fanciers, and circus workers to musicians. When he died, his family discovered over 500 completed paintings in the house that he’d shared with his mother.

His ambition, quietly held, was to have an exhibition, but that only happened posthumously. And it was a massive success thanks to the tireless work of the author and his family.

I absolutely loved this elegant, funny, moving book and can’t recommend it too highly.

Light by Eva Figes.

While I’m on the subject of books about art and artists, this is a lovely short novel that imagines a day in the life of Claude Monet and his family in the summer of 1900.

It is particularly good at describing light, but the whole book is an eloquent, dream-like, painterly description of the mercurial nature of Monet, his habits, family and methods. Characters (all real) appear without any introduction or explanation as to who they are; Monet and his wife Alice had various children and stepchildren between them, so I kept wiki at close hand.

It was first published in 2007 but has just been republished for the first time in 25 years (why would a book of this quality not be in print?!). Recommended.

Audiobooks.

The Coming Storm. A Journey into the Heart of the Conspiracy Machine. Gabriel Gatehouse.

I think that this might be my last MAGA book for a while; this interest in American politics is beginning to do my head in. But this is good, even if, like me, you have heard a good deal of it before.

Gatehouse is a former International Editor of Newsnight, and he has a wonderful, arch, intelligent manner.

This is a long and deeply terrifying exploration of the impact of misinformation and manipulation and explains eloquently how it is that Trump came to power for the second time. In many ways, Gatehouse’s thesis is that democracy is now dead and that the internet rules. You can complain all you like, or like Kamala Harris, make a hard-to-grasp case for the value of liberal democracy, but against the might and the mischief of conspiracy theorists, you probably stand no chance.

Listen. Weep.

Try to think positive thoughts.

Heirs and Graces. A History of the Modern Aristocracy. Eleanor Doughy.

This is too long for me, or too long given that it focuses on a subject that interests me, but doesn’t enthral me. You may enjoy dipping in and out of it as I did.

Both the FT and The Times loved it, and it is definitely a warm, amusing and well-researched account of its subject (for ‘modern’ read post WWII). At its heart is an interest in change, some fascinating, original and intelligent characters and, of course, the wider impact of a ruling class that has dominated politics (via the House of Lords and its predecessors) for over 1,000 years.

TV.

ZeroZeroZero.

I am not a big TV watcher, if you exclude footie, mainly because I am so stupidly restless, but I do love a good series and four years after its release Caroline and I really liked this eight-parter.

It’s based on a book by Robert Saviano, who wrote Gomorrah. It ricochets between Mexico, Italy, New Orleans and NW Africa and is bleak, very violent and beautiful to look at. This is complicated, in a good way, with a timeline that jumps backwards and forwards. I found it engaging and stressful, but it oozes quality.

The story follows a massive shipment of cocaine as it travels from its source on the crime-ridden streets of Monterrey, Mexico, via, well, a very unexpected and convoluted route, to Italy. The scale and scope of the story is vast and highly cinematic.

There is very little light or joy here, though, and perhaps the title refers to the souls of the characters*, which is pretty Conradesque now I think about it. But even though it’s hard to care about most of the characters (a vile, joyless bunch) we definitely did care about the outcome.

And Black Rabbit is great too.

It’s Ozark meets The Bear.

*On proofreading this newsletter, Caroline tells me that this is the real reason for the name of this excellent show:

The title refers to the whitest, finest-milled type of wheat flour (000), which is “the nickname among narco traffickers for the purest cocaine on the market”.

That’s all from me.

Charlie x