Eurofile

Germany’s complex history has left it with some fascinating features, not least its pockets of Slavic speakers. PETER TRUDGILL reports. The boundary in northern Europe between the areas where Germanic languages are spoken and those which are occupied by Slavic-language speakers has been shifting backwards and forwards on an east­-west axis for at least a […]

Modern sensibilities have made Paul Gauguin a deeply controversial figure, yet he played a pivotal role in the development of portrait art, shifting the focus from sitter to painter. CLAUDIA PRITCHARD reports A head is a matter of two eyes, a nose and a mouth, arranged any way you like. So said Picasso, in whose […]

Peter Trudgill recounts the story of what happened to one of Britain’s ancient languages, Old Norse During the first millennium AD, Britain was home to four major languages, each of which had arrived from a different point of the compass. The first was Britonnic Celtic, the ancestor of Breton and Cornish, which had come to […]

Françoise Sagan lived an ostentatious and radical lifestyle when she was not working on a collection of dozens of plays, novels, and short stories, CHARLIE CONNELLY reports. On the afternoon of September 14, 1957, Françoise Sagan was at the wheel of her Aston Martin barrelling along the D448 just outside Paris. Egged on by the […]

‘A Very Expensive Poison’ is about as guttural and stereotypical as six straight shots of vodka, writes TIM WALKER Tom Brooke as Alexander Litvinenko and MyAnna Buring as Marina in A Very Expensive Poison – Credit: Archant With colour- and even gender-blind casting now commonplace in the world of the theatre, I’m not sure if […]

PETER TRUDGILL follows a thread through the centuries, via various connected words related to the telling of time. In English, when we speak about the approximately twice-a-day rising and falling of the seas along our shores, we talk of high tides and low tides. Norwegian uses similar terminology: høgvatn, ‘high water’, and lågvatn, ‘low water’, […]

In the past, Estoniabs have literally sung for their freedom. And their capital city remains the crucible of this national pastime. SOPHIA DEBOICK reports. Estonia presents a forbidding face to the world. The most northerly of the Baltic states, it is a country half covered by forests, fringed with windswept islands and islets. There is […]

Without even showing up, Roman Polanski managed to dominate the 76th Venice Film Festival. Of course, if he had appeared, the 86-year-old film-maker and fugitive rapist might have been extradited to the US to face the charge he fled in 1977. That would have been some drama. Louis Garrell as Alfred Dreyfuss and Jean Dujardin […]

Few cities possess as intimate a connection to a musical style as Seville, SOPHIA DEBOICK reports. The cultural energy of Seville pulsates to a musical beat. Whether it’s found in the processions of Semana Santa (Holy Week), where religious statues sway through the streets to a sombre accompaniment of brass bands, or the march of […]

The very spot where accents change can often be pinpointed and it’s often a case of geography, as PETER TRUDGILL explains My late mother-in-law came from the American Midwest, a predominantly flat land of enormously fertile and productive soils. She was not very impressed by the Rocky Mountains, observing that you couldn’t grow much there. […]

TIM WALKER gives a glowing review of playwright Andre Bovell’s newest ‘epic, big screen’ play. It was the playwright John Osborne who observed that it was a gift from God to be born English. Stiff upper lips, Spitfires, Scott of the Antarctic and sanctimoniousness: we’ve always been encouraged to believe that we’re superior to everyone […]

Claudia Pritchard looks at the Guildhall Art Gallery’s Architecture of London exhibition Fire and water, riots and war, need and fashion, demolition and construction. The forces at work on the architecture of London come from all sides, never letting up, as an exhibition featuring 400 years of the capital’s depiction in art shows. And it […]

A city with a musical pedigree to match any, Sheffield is still producing acts that could not have come from anywhere else, as Sophia Deboick reports Jarvis Cocker, lead singer of English rock band Pulp, performs live on the NME stage at the Glastonbury Festival near Pilton, Somerset on 26th June 1994. Photo: Michael Putland/Getty […]

The recent row over Enid Blyton is nothing new, says Charlie Connelly. The children’s author was always controversial. Enid Blyton isn’t often in the news these days, not least because it’s more than half a century since her death in 1968 at the age of 71. She was however at the centre of a kerfuffle […]

TIM WALKER reviews The Doctor at London’s Almeida Theatre Social media has helped to make identity politics an inescapable part of modern life. This has been as much of a curse as a blessing since it means we’re now required to be in an almost perpetual state of outrage over this, that and the other. […]

TIM WALKER reviews Evita at Regent’s Park Theatre and gives the performance five stars. Stage performance of Evita at Regents Park Theatre. Photograph: Marc Brenner. – Credit: Archant Jamie Lloyd’s revival of Evita is played out on a stage taken up entirely by a staircase that leads up to the rusting capital letters E, V, […]

Charlie Connelly reports on Herman Melville, author of Moby Dick, and how two trips to Europe reflected his changing fortunes. Moby Dick is cited by many respected literary eggheads as the Great American Novel. Like many novels dubbed ‘great’, not many people have read it all the way through, which considering it’s a blend of […]

Music in Iran provides a challenge not just to the authorities but to our perceptions of the country, says Sophia Deboick. Iran’s musical inheritance runs deep. It is the place where complex musical instruments first appear in the archaeological record (representations of lyres, harps and lutes dating to the third millennium BC survive), and the […]

The spiritual home of white America’s very own music genre, Nashville is country music. But it’s not always been all about rhinestones and 10-gallon hats, as SOPHIA DEBOICK reports. Hall Willis, Ginger Willis and Tommy Hill stand next to The Louvin Brothers outside the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. Picture: Getty Images – Credit: Getty Images […]

JASON SOLOMONS identifies one of the films of the summer and hears from director Gurinder Chadha about how it was inspired by Brexit. Gurinder Chadha, director of ‘Blinded By The Light’. Picture: Getty Images – Credit: Getty Images Blinded by the Light is one of the best films of the summer. A big, bright British […]

They seem an increasingly unfashionable, unoriginal choice now, but package holidays were once little short of revolutionary. SOPHIA DEBOICK tells the tale of the first ever trip, and its visionary mastermind. Tourists enjoy Majorca in the years before mass tourism. Picture: Getty Images – Credit: Getty Images More than 160 years after Thomas Cook organised […]

It’s a case of all aboard for murder as Eastenders star Samantha Womack plays an embittered, unemployed Rachel Watson. Duke of York’s, London, until August 17 In essence, The Girl on the Train is a creaky, old-fashioned whodunnit with ideas above its station. And, yes, a brilliantly clever pun was just intended there. Fans of […]

PETER TRUDGILL explains why some old childhood favourites no longer seem to rhyme. Many of us remember from our childhood the well-known nursery rhyme which goes: “Jack and Jill/Went up the hill/To fetch a pail of water. Jack fell down/And broke his crown/ And Jill came tumbling after.” Jill rhymes with hill, and down rhymes […]

Even when staging a musical like Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! there’s a perilously thin dividing line between magnificence and naffness says TIM WALKER. A lot of the problem is that there can be few, if any, punters who haven’t now heard all of the big numbers in a sturdy old classic like this at least […]

SOPHIA DEBOICK kicks off a new feature, looking at the musical history of a different city each week. First an examination of Berlin’s remarkably creative heritage, from Dietrich to Depeche Mode, with many in between. Depeche Mode, group portrait, Berlin, July 1984, L-R Martin Gore, Dave Gahan, Alan Wilder, Andrew Fletcher. (Photo by Michael Putland/Getty […]

The last hurrah for music hall coincided with Britain embracing a new sound, and both had a big year in 1919. SOPHIA DEBOICK reports. Rarely had the world been in such turmoil as it was 100 years ago. While the June signing of the Treaty of Versailles declared the First World War officially over, the […]

The new prime minister is part of a long – and largely undistinguished – line of politicians who have turned their hand to fiction. CHARLIE CONNELLY suggests a sense of entitlement might be behind the trend. Boris Johnson’s many current faults and past scandals have already been forensically – and necessarily – dissected, but there […]

TIM WALKER reviews The Night of the Iguana at the Noel Coward Theatre, London. “Oh God, please can’t we stop now?” wails Lia Williams as a downtrodden artist towards the end of James Macdonald’s production of The Night of the Iguana. It was a sentiment I suspect a fair proportion of the first night audience […]

SOPHIA DEBOICK looks back at a significant moment in British history as a new musical culture started to take shape on these shores. Portrait of Pope Gregory I (540-604) known as Saint Gregory the Great. By Pedro Berruguete (1450-1504) Spanish painter. His art is regarded as a transitional style between gothic and Renaissance. Dated 15th […]

TIM WALKER’s take on the ‘mind-numbingly slow and boring’ Captain Corelli’s Mandolin at Pinter Theatre, London. I have neither read Louis de Bernières’ romantic novel Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, nor have I seen the film version, which starred Nicolas Cage and Penélope Cruz. This clearly put me at a distinct disadvantage as I attempted to make […]

A new film about the touching relationship between the singer and writer and Marianne Ihlen, the muse he met on a hippy hideout in the Mediterranean, comes with an added twist- Director Nick Broomfield was also her lover. He talks to JASON SOLOMONS. Norwegian expatriate Marianne Jensen (also known as Ihlen) (right), Canadian poet, author, […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY warns that writing may become the preserve of the elite if Britain doesn’t value and support its authors in an ever more precarious trade. Ireland has always had a more enlightened attitude to its writers and artists than the UK and this was emphasised last week by the announcement from the Irish minister […]