Arts & Culture

Steyn's Song of the Week

(I'm In Love With) A Wonderful Guy

A few weeks back, apropos "June Is Bustin' Out All Over", I mentioned that we hadn't done a lot of "month" songs in the years we've been running this feature. Some months - mostly spring ("April Showers", "April In Paris") and fall ("September Song", "September In The Rain") - seem to lend themselves to musicalization. If "June Is Bustin' Out All Over" is about as big a hit title as the sixth month of the year has ever produced, the eighth (which looms this very week) can't even manage a title ...

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Mark at the Movies

Fahrenheit 9/11

Steyn on the high water mark of Michael Moore's cultural moment

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Ave atque vale

Chemistry Lessons

James Garner was one of those actors who was watchable in almost anything, even commercials. He had great sexual chemistry, which is why his leading ladies loved working with him...

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Steyn on Culture

New Balls

I was sorry to see my compatriot Eugénie Bouchard lose in the Wimbledon ladies' final. A Montrealer, she's named after the Queen's granddaughter, Princess Eugenie, yet bears the illustrious francophone surname of the former future président de la république himself...

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On the Town

Beautiful Dolls and Only Girls

This summer marks the 100th anniversary of the start of the Great War, the conflict that gave us the modern world - Communist Russia, the post-Ottoman Middle East, Europe's loss of civilizational confidence. The catalyst for war was the assassination of the Archduke Franz-Ferdinand, which Mark noted here a month ago. In the weeks ahead, we'll be looking at some of World War One's cultural legacy, for good or ill. As a curtain-raiser, here's an encore presentation of a SteynOnline audio special, celebrating the British Tommies' favourite ballad of the war years, "If You Were The Only Girl In The World", and its composer Nat D Ayer.

Ayer was a two-hit wonder, with an ocean between them: "If You Were The Only Girl" was his British hit; his American hit from five years earlier was known to generations of Looney Tunes viewers for most of the next century - "Oh, You Beautiful Doll". This special podcast was first broadcast to mark the 100th birthday of "Beautiful Doll" in 2011...

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