Eurofile

PETER TRUDGILL on the origins of many of our most common surnames… and much more besides There are quite a lot of people in Great Britain, and in other English-speaking parts of the world, who have surnames ending in -kins or -kinson: Atkins, Dickinson, Jenkins, Parkinson, Simkins, Tomkinson, Watkins, Wilkinson – and plenty more. If […]

Classical music may have played a central role in Finland’s history, but so has classic rock. SOPHIA DEBOICK reports. Finland is a land of extremes. With a population of five-and-a-half million, it is the most sparsely populated country in the European Union, and it is also the EU’s most northerly country, its northernmost third lying […]

Perhaps Britain’s most important living painter, Bridget Riley’s op-art paved the way for the Swinging Sixties. Claudia Pritchard reports. The 60-year career of the artist Bridget Riley seems as clear-cut and directional as the knife-sharp edges in her eye-catching stripes, as solid and dependable as the coloured discs of her later years.
And a glorious retrospective […]

Released 40 years ago and now the subject of its own exhibition, The Clash’s London Calling simultaneously paid tribute to rock ‘n’ roll and took an iconoclast’s Hammer to it. SOPHIA DEBOICK reports. Joe Strummer of The Clash exchanges his shirt with a member of the audience during a concert. (Photo by © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS/Corbis […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY looks back on the life of Svetlana Alliluyeva. Soviet politician Lavrentiy Beria with Josef Stalin’s daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva, USSR, 1930s. Beria (1899-1953) was First Secretary of the Georgian Communist Party during the 1930s. He began working in the security apparatus in the early 1920s and went (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images) […]

TIM WALKER reviews Sydney & the Old Girl at Park Theatre, London. Miriam Margolyes has a splendidly comic face, a splendidly comic voice and a splendidly comic sense of timing. A more splendidly comic actress it’s hard to imagine. I could happily watch Margolyes reciting the entire electoral roll without becoming even remotely bored. I […]

It may lack the glitz of more renowned musical hubs, but in Stockton it’s the soul that counts says SOPHIA DEBOICK. While some places are synonymous with music industry glamour, others entirely lack mystique. Stockton-on-Tees’ claims to fame include the invention of the friction match in a chemist’s shop on its high street (the widest […]

We have borrowed plenty of words from Greek – but they haven’t always kept quite the same meaning, says PETER TRUDGILL If you are on holiday in Greece or Cyprus, you may be unlucky enough to come across a sign hanging on the door of your hotel lift saying Ektós liturgías. Ektós is not necessarily […]

CLAUDIA PRITCHARD on a new exhibition telling the story of Magnum Photos, the agency which handed photographers control. USA. Baltimore, Maryland. 1964. Martin Luther KING. Photo: ©Leonard Freed / Magnum Photos – Credit: ©Leonard Freed / Magnum Photos On the road with Martin Luther King, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the funeral train of […]

The original publication of The War of the Worlds was like a bombshell to an angst-ridden Britain suspicious of its neighbours. Now, why might the BBC consider a new adaption so timely? CHARLIE CONNELLY reports There’s never really a wrong time to revive H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds. Whenever a new adaptation comes […]

The Austrian capital’s somewhat stuffy image as the home of classical music overlooks the fact it has always been keen on celebration, says SOPHIA DEBOICK Vienna is the classical music capital of the world. The masters of the first Viennese school – Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Haydn – all lived and died there, sustained by […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY assesses the dramatic life of Vera Karalli and finds more to it than her apparent connection to one of the 20th century’s most intriguing killings The death of Grigori Rasputin, spiritual adviser to the Russian Tsar Nicholas and a particular favourite of the Tsarina Alexandra, in St Petersburg on December 30, 1916, is […]

PETER TRUDGILL revisits a traumatic day in English football history to track down some etymological roots On June 22, 1986, in a World Cup quarter-final football match played between England and Argentina in Mexico City, the Argentinian player Diego Maradona knocked the ball into the England net with his hand and claimed a goal – […]

TIM WALKER reviews the National Theatre’s latest production Ironically, the highest salary I’ve so far received in my career was when I was required to do absolutely nothing. I was working for a business start-up that no one was supposed to know about – something to do with upgrading the security technology at airports – […]

PETER TRUDGILL on how languages come up with the words their culture requires and uses snow as an example. My German-English dictionary says that the German word keltern is to be translated into English as ‘to press (of grapes)’ (for the purpose of making wine). The word comes originally from Latin calcatura, ‘stamping’, which is […]

Musicians have always reflected the two sides of Vegas, the glitz on the surface and the pathos that lies below. SOPHIA DEBOICK reports. For a place that is a byword for hedonism, Las Vegas had humdrum beginnings. A Mojave Desert rest stop on the Old Spanish Trail trade route between Los Angeles and Santa Fe, […]

TIM WALKER reviews The Girl Who Fell which is at Trafalgar Studios until November 23. When I think of the internet, and how the world was before we had it and how it is now, I wonder if Sir Winston Churchill’s verdict on Stanley Baldwin doesn’t also hold good for its inventor, Sir Tim Berners-Lee. […]

Charlie Connelly delves into the life of Alexey Stakhanov, Stalin’s superstar miner. The evening of August 30, 1935, was a warm and muggy one in eastern Ukraine when Alexey Stakhanov left his small flat in Kadievka and headed for the night shift at the Tsentralnaya-Irmino mine. The mine had been working round the clock since […]

Botswana’s capital is home to a diverse musical culture, where traditional sounds infuse many genres – not least its thriving heavy metal scene. SOPHIA DEBOICK reports Botswana is a country unlike any other in Africa. Since its 1966 independence it has been one of the most politically stable nations on the continent and has enjoyed […]

PETER TRUDGILL explains the journey along which we arrived at our use of the negative If you have learnt even a little bit of French, you will probably know that the word pas in that language means ‘not’. Pas mal! is ‘not bad’. Pas encore means ‘not yet’. Pas moi! is the equivalent of ‘not […]

TIM WALKER reviews Brian Friel’s Translation at the National Theatre. The grizzled old Jimmy Jack Cassie laments in Brian Friel’s play Translations: “I’m a barbarian in this place because I’m not understood by anybody.” All any of us ultimately want in life is to be understood – that’s how we establish our identity – but […]

For centuries the French capital has been a centre for freedom of expression, a status that has produced legendary artists and venues. SOPHIA DEBOICK reports Paris is where legends are made. Or rather where they make themselves. The icons of French music have routinely spun mythical backstories for themselves, and the very streets of the […]

Literary gongs seldom court much controversy. But, as CHARLIE CONNELLY explains, this year is different Polish author Olga Tokarczuk arrives prior to a press conference and a lecture after she was awarded with the 2018 Nobel Literature Prize. (Photo by Sascha Schuermann / AFP) (Photo by SASCHA SCHUERMANN/AFP via Getty Images) – Credit: AFP via […]

TIM WALKER reviews Noises Off at the Garrick Theatre, and reminisces on the play’s former glory When it’s done correctly, Noises Off, Michael Frayn’s comedy about life backstage, should look like a perfectly-choreographed ballet. Actors need to pass on props – such as plates of sardines, telephones and suitcases – to one another with split-second […]

One hundred years on, PETER TRUDGILL tells the story of another referendum, one which hinged on language On May 11, 1919, a Volksabstimmung took place in the mountainous region that is now the Austrian province of Vorarlberg. Vorarlberg means ‘before Arlberg’, the Arlberg being the mountain massif which contains the steep pass which separates the […]

CHARLIE connelly on the death of a poet who chronicled his city’s epic story. There was something terribly poignant about how Ciaran Carson, who died on October 6, left us just when Northern Ireland was anchored to the top of the British news agenda for the first time in two decades. Diagnosed with terminal lung […]

Broad and wide mean pretty much the same thing – they are very close to being synonyms. The Oxford English Dictionary defines broad as “extended in the direction measured from side to side; wide”; and wide is also defined as “having great extent from side to side”. Both broad and wide are also said by […]

He might have ended up as a byword for naffness, but Demis Roussos had taken an eventful and experimental route to get there. SOPHIA DEBOICK reports on the singer and other Greek greats. “Angela likes Demis Roussos, Tony likes Demis Roussos, I like Demis Roussos and Sue would like to hear Demis Roussos. So do […]

The singer Sam Smith’s desire to be referred to as ‘they/them’ throws up language challenges, says linguistics expert PETER TRUDGILL. Sam Smith has expressed the wish to be referred to as they rather than he or she. Many people already operate this pronoun system when requested to do so, and are happy to use it. […]

Battered by the bombs and the collapse of its motor industry, the West Midlands hub responded with regeneration through sound. SOPHIA DEBOICK reports. Guitarist Lynval Golding of The Specials performs live on stage during their 40th Anniversary Tour at Coventry Cathedral ruins. Photo: Jim Bennett/Getty Images – Credit: Getty Images Coventry has become near-synonymous with […]

TIM WALKER says ‘Master Harold’… and the boys is a long burn production in a time of inpatient theatregoers. For most of the 100 minutes that Roy Alexander Weise’s production of ‘Master Harold’… and the Boys runs, there is a ‘least said, soonest mended’ approach to the issue of apartheid in South Africa in the […]

For our most commonly-used words, brevity is an obvious advantage, says PETER TRUDGILL. But that doesn’t mean it always applies. On the train the other day, I was wondering why the people across the aisle from me kept saying “again”, until I realised that they were Hungarian and were in fact saying igen, the Hungarian […]