In the 1960s, William Sargant used a combination of narcosis and ECT to ‘reprogram’ troubled young women. Now his patients, including the actor Celia Imrie and the former model Linda Keith, are trying to piece together what happened

From the reinforced windows of ward five, high up in the Edwardian eaves of London’s Royal Waterloo hospital for children and women, a 14-year-old Celia Imrie used to stare down, hoping to spot her mother. “When I walk past that old, redbrick hospital building today, on my way to the Imax or the National Theatre,” says Imrie, who went on to become a successful actor, “I can see the window where I’d sit waiting for her and a deep chill passes through me.”

Every day, thousands of commuters and tourists pass beneath the former hospital. Some might look up to admire the terracotta facade, with its ornate colonnades and glazed tile lettering, but few are aware of the medical horrors that took place in one small room on the top floor: the Sleep Room. It was here, on ward five, that female patients – they were almost always women – were put to sleep for three to four months (in one case, five), only roused from their beds to be fed, washed and given electroconvulsive therapy (ECT): a shock of up to 110 volts that passed bilaterally through the temporal lobe of the brain, triggering a grand mal seizure.

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The British photographer saw an echo of a famous painting when he shot three strangers in a Toronto gallery

While in Toronto on a work shoot, Martin James Burton decided to take the opportunity to visit the Art Gallery of Ontario. The photojournalist, who is based in Lewes, East Sussex, England, had some lunch before heading in to see the art. While there he happened upon these three strangers. “The people in the picture are sitting waiting either for nothing to happen or for something to happen. There is a feeling of the surreal to it and an odd sense of anticipation,” Burton says. “The man with his head turned towards you draws you in, and the huge bright, blank screen is like a giant softbox lighting the subjects perfectly.”

Burton remembers his excitement at taking the shot: he immediately knew that he had captured something unusual. He also saw a resemblance to the painting Nighthawks , by American artist Edward Hopper, which portrays four people in a downtown diner at night. “I’ve always thought that photography has its own individual place in art, but when a photograph resembles a particular painting or style, it may give it an extra kudos – particularly if it’s not preconceived,” he says.

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Other foreign language additions include utepils - enjoying a beer outside – and komorebi, describing sunlight dappling through leaves

Have you ever held a puppy that was so unbelievably fluffy and adorable you didn’t know how to convey the strong urge to squeeze its head without sounding like a maniac? Well, now there’s a word for it: gigil.

Gigil (pronounced ghee-gill) is one of the new words that have made it into the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).

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York Theatre Royal
Fun, intelligent and powered by Rice’s joyful whimsy, this playful take on the spy movie is a crowd-pleaser

Mistaken identity fires Alfred Hitchcock’s Kafkaesque 1959 spy thriller. The existential terror of a man under attack by unknown forces begins when New York ad-man Roger Thornhill stands up to make a phone call in a hotel lobby and is mistaken for George Kaplan, a nonexistent spy created as a decoy by the US’s cold war-era security services. From thereon in he is pursued by enemies of the state. If everyone insists Roger is George, where does that leave his sense of self?

Emma Rice ’s adaptation is not concerned with the crisis around identity but with sending up the espionage genre through an archly played collection of spies and villains.

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BBC Concert Orchestra/Hughes/Münch/Andrews
(Resonus)
Dating from 2000 to 2023, referencing folk dance, spirituals and house music and including works for voices, there’s real variety and quality here

This release can only scratch the surface of the output of Errollyn Wallen , appointed Master of the King’s Music last summer, but it does demonstrate the eclecticism of her work. The pieces date from 2000 to 2023; all share a strong sense of momentum in these performances by the BBC Concert Orchestra and conductor John Andrews . Sometimes, it is clear how that onward drive is achieved: in Mighty River a constant, pulsing note is heard throughout virtually the whole 16-minute movement, underpinning quotes from Amazing Grace and references to spirituals. Often, though, it is more an undercurrent of restless agitation.

Two works include voices. By Gis and by St Charity is a short and effective setting of Shakespeare, compellingly delivered by Ruby Hughes, with the orchestral players’ chants of “shame!” drawing us into Ophelia’s claustrophobic inner world. Idunnu Münch is the vivid soloist in This Frame is Part of the Painting, which, setting Wallen’s own words, captures the vivid colours of Howard Hodgkin ’s paintings.

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Focal Point Gallery, Southend
The young Pole’s work is buzzing with pop references and ideas about the future, all grounded in the everyday – with kaiser rolls and gherkins

There’s a lot of art about birth, death and rebirth, but not a lot of it uses pickles. Preserves, however, are all over Polish artist Rafał Zajko’s biggest solo show yet. Big jars of brine filled with salty cucumbers and little figurines in the shape of cryogenic preservation chambers. That combination of the fantastically sci-fi and the mundanely everyday is Zajko’s hallmark. The young London-based artist has spent the past few years showing ceramic and concrete sculptures filled with flights of cybernetic romanticism and nods to vaping, baking and pickling.

In The Spin Off, as this show at Focal Point Gallery in Southend is called, he has gone on a deep dive into a vast mess of ideas about longevity and rebirth. The centre of the space is dominated by an ovoid floor sculpture that gets moved and reshaped throughout the week. Laid across its surface, ceramic tiles are assembled to look like a map of planetary systems or control panels for alien spaceships, covered in incomprehensible knobs, buttons and displays. Circular sections of it can be lifted out and replaced with items from the cabinets on the wall: little concrete eggs, ceramic kaiser rolls, jars of pickles.

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It looked destined to take over the world. But after misfiring albums, a legal drama involving bright hopes NewJeans and with domestic fans getting bored, the South Korean music industry is nervous

Earlier this decade, it seemed as if the long-vaunted South Korean takeover of American pop was finally happening. In summer 2020, BTS’s Dynamite became the first K-pop track to top the US chart, and in 2023, girl group Blackpink became the first K-pop act to headline Coachella . But just two years later, the story looks very different.

Ruby and Alter Ego , recent solo albums by Blackpink members Jennie and Lisa, each debuted at No 7 on the US album chart before dropping out of the Top 10 after one week, and neither album produced a single that peaked higher than No 68. Relative newcomers such as Tomorrow X Together, Ateez and Twice have achieved solid first-week chart positions, thanks to strong physical album sales, before facing precipitous drop-offs. NewJeans – a young, critically acclaimed new K-pop group who looked to be the genre’s strongest hope in the US after Blackpink and BTS – have been bogged down by controversies and legal dramas in South Korea, stopping them from capitalising on the success of their 2023 single Super Shy.

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Takács Quartet/Marc-André Hamelin
(Hyperion)
Dvořák’s Quintet No 2 in A major is full of charm, while Florence Price’s Piano Quintet in A minor is fleet of foot; this dream-team of chamber music makes them an excellent match

F lorence Price ’s Piano Quintet in A minor, composed in the mid-1930s, is yet another gem from the treasure trove of forgotten Price manuscripts discovered in 2009. The premiere recording was released by the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective only four years ago, but this new one, by the chamber-music dream team of the Takács Quartet and pianist Marc-André Hamelin , offers a different slant, placing the work more firmly in the classical tradition of the Dvořák with which it is paired. A good example of this is the third of the four movements, which Price, as in her symphonies, casts as a juba – a dance from the plantations. In the Kaleidoscope performance, it sounds like a ragtime stomp; as played by Hamelin and the Takács it is fleeter of foot, jazzy and sparkling. The two approaches are complementary, equally worthwhile, yet if anything the Quintet as a whole sounds less self-conscious as the Takács and Hamelin have it.

Dvořák’s Quintet No 2 in A major – written in 1887, the year of Price’s birth – dates from before his move to New York and therefore predates his own wholehearted embrace of black American music. It is nicely paired with the Price here in a characterful performance in which the music’s passion is perfectly balanced with its charm.

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From the Barry-Billericay finale to Wolf Hall, Pachinko and Nobody Wants This, there are far too many cruelly overlooked shows this year. But the even bigger problem? Bafta’s Adolescence issue

• Stalking saga Baby Reindeer leads 2025 TV Bafta nominations

The latest Bafta TV awards again show the range of talent across UK television. Though drama characteristically dominates, the shows with most nominations – Rivals, Mr Bates vs The Post Office, Slow Horses and Baby Reindeer – represent a range of genres and source material (from real events via a 36-year-old Jilly Cooper bonkbuster to a solo theatre show) suggesting that the 2025 voters have largely avoided historical snobbery, long a problem in these prizes.

The awards also continue a belated honouring of overlooked talent. After improbably having to wait until last year for his first main Bafta nomination, David Tennant gets a rapid second, for his thrilling turn as a Richard III of the TV industry in the raunchy Cooper adaptation Rivals. It also seems rudely overdue that performers as great as Jonathan Pryce and Sharon D Clarke have had to wait until now: honoured for Slow Horses and Mr Loverman respectively. Danny Dyer also makes his debut in the lists, though oddly not for his career-transforming wigged romantic in Rivals but for Sky Max’s Mr Bigstuff.

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