Eurofile

Loathed by Picasso, praised by Matisse, Pierre Bonnard is an artist who split opinion, writes Claudia Pritchard. A major new exhibition of his work shows how he still does. Nude in the Bath c. 1936-8, by Pierre Bonnard Picture: Tate – Credit: Archant ‘Don’t talk to me about Bonnard,’ protested Picasso around the time of […]

As the Second World War took shape, a big band leader dominated the year. While, from very different quarters, a Disney film and an emerging folk star signalled sounds of the future.SOPHIA DEBOICK reports. The year began with a sense of foreboding. Four months on from the Nazi invasion of Poland, Britain faced the start […]

TIM WALKER’s stage review of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s show Aspects of Love. Two weeks before Aspects of Love first opened in the West End, Roger Moore dramatically withdrew from the cast, saying that he couldn’t cope with the technical demands of the singing. Three decades on, when I got to see Andrew Lloyd Webber’s show […]

Why does the death of a footballer produce such a particular and profound sense of pathos? asks CHARLIE CONNELLY When the aircraft intending to carry 28-year-old Argentinean footballer Emiliano Sala from Nantes to Cardiff disappeared over the English Channel north of Alderney, shock and bewilderment spread throughout the football world. In Nantes, the Breton city […]

TIM WALKER’s stage review of Approaching Empty. The Kiln Theatre in north London has once again made good on its stated mission to encourage artists of all ages and backgrounds with its latest production, Approaching Empty. It is by Ishy Din, a former cab driver of Kashmiri origin, whose family made their home in Middlesbrough. […]

As the Romani brought a gypsy beat from the east, Europe’s greatest musical innovator, Hildegard of Bingen, found a sound that could examine the human condition, as much as praise God. SOPHIA DEBOICK reports. Not even a century on from the Norman conquest, 1150 found England in the grip of political crisis. Henry I had […]

As a hit new documentary provides Bros with an unlikely comeback, SOPHIA DEBOICK looks back to the eccentric twins’ first embrace 
of fame Tiffany, wearing a black hat and her hand placed on her cheek. (Photo by Lynn Goldsmith/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images) – Credit: Corbis/VCG via Getty Images For Britain, 1988 was a manic year. […]

This week marks the 80th anniversary of the mysterious death of the sublimely-talented footballer Matthias Sindelar. CHARLIE CONNELLY revisits the tragic story of a true Austrian hero National hero: Matthias Sindelar’s image was used to market watches, milk and yogurt. Photo submitted – Credit: Archant Vienna has always had a strong fascination with death. In […]

PETER TRUDGILL on how some unlikely connections between European languages emerged after 2,000 years The Albanian word for king is mbret. You might think that this has got nothing to do with any word in any language that you have ever come across before. But it would be slightly surprising if you were right. Albanian […]

TIM WALKER on the play that Jeremy Corbyn should watch. Si�n Brooke and Alex Hassell in I’m Not Running at the National Theatre by David Hare. Photo by Mark Douet – Credit: Photo by Mark Douet There can be few, if any, audiences traditionally so predisposed to voting Labour than the National Theatre’s. The playwright […]

Tim Walker finds Pinter’s Party Time and Celebration to be an unexpected pleasure. It is hard as a theatre critic not to take almost as much pleasure in the hatreds as the enthusiasms. Over two decades of reviewing, I have seldom, if ever, had a good word to say about Harold Pinter. His work always […]

The castrato singer Farinelli was the undoubted superstar of an era in which musical advances were made not just with compositions, but instruments too. SOPHIA DEBOICK reports In the 1730s Britain was alive with colonial ambition, making power plays for continued dominance in the world abroad, and in possession of thrusting cities at home. The […]

PETER TRUDGILL suggests a time and a place for when and where the English language came into being English is a language which certainly came into existence rather gradually. If we want to know how old it is, the only sensible way of answering that question is to determine when English started breaking away from […]

Tim Walker reviews the National Theatre’s production of Edgar Allan Poe’s grisly tale, The Tell-Tale Heart Peter Cushing knew his craft and numbered among his fans Laurence Olivier, who cast him as Osric in his 1948 film adaptation of Hamlet, and he toured with the great actor and the Old Vic Company in Australia. One […]

It provided the inspiration – and name – for the race, but Greece’s Marathón also has a fascinating linguistic history. PETER TRUDGILL reports. The men’s race at the Athens marathon (marathónios in Greek) was won this year by the Kenyan athlete Misoi Brimin Kipkorir of Kenya, in two hours 10 minutes and 56 seconds; the […]

X Factor’s advent was shortly to end the traditional fight for the festive top slot. But it went out with a bang in 2003, says SOPHIA DEBOICK. Comedian Avid Merrion launches his bid for the Christmas number one spot with Bo Selecta single “Proper Crimbo”. Photo by Dave Hogan/Getty Images – Credit: Getty Images Christmas […]

Back to the farmstead, PETER TRUDGILL reveals the etymology of Paris Hilton’s name but he’s not going to France for the answer. Travellers crossing from England to France via the Channel Tunnel emerge into French daylight in the vicinity of a place called Fréthun, southwest of Calais. In the Pas-de-Calais and the neighbouring le Nord […]

TIM WALKER reviews A Christmas Carol at the Charles Dickens Museum. When A Christmas Carol is done really well – and Dominic Gerrard does it sublimely – members of the audience are compelled to play the part of Scrooge, albeit passively from their seats. This powerful work ought always to grab hold of everyone out […]

Writing fraternal wrongs Sam Shepard’s True West is supposedly a homage to the vanishing American West, but it’s more about a writer losing control of what he’s writing and the triumph of mediocrity over talent.​ There is, of course, only one difference between good writing and bad writing, and that is, in the case of […]

A self-confident Britain holds sway, with the Spice Girls and Oasis to the fore. SOPHIA DEBOICK reports. Los del Río’s Macarena was an unlikely smash hit, but it became the biggest single of 1996. The middle-aged Latin pop duo from Seville had been knocking about since the early 1960s, but when this rumba from an […]

In his latest review, TIM WALKER watches Joanna Murray-Smith’s Switzerland at London’s Ambassadors Theatre. When Christmas approaches – and with it the prospect of big family reunions – the thoughts of the nation always seem to turn inexorably towards murder. No festive season is, after all, complete without Miss Marple making an appearance on television, […]

The singer re-emerged in one of his most ebullient incarnations, while another star unveiled his own signature move. SOPHIA DEBOICK reports That the international hit of 1983 was Culture Club’s Karma Chameleon proved that Britain still outstripped the rest of the world for boundary-pushing music. Pleasant pop it was, but its lyrical undercurrent of anguished […]

PETER TRUDGILL on some familiar celebratory Balkan phrases, and how they reflect the region’s complex linguistic history Macedonia is a geographical term which refers to an area of the southern Balkans. For some centuries, the region was part of the Ottoman Empire, ruled by the Turks from Constantinople. It contained a mixed and varied population […]

After Jonathan Franzen’s puffed-up advice for aspiring writers got a mauling online, CHARLIE CONNELLY offers his own, less pretentious tips. Midwinder – Credit: Archant Jonathan Franzen is a Serious Writer, the sort of Serious Writer who requires capital letters whenever you describe him as a Serious Writer. Most of us are serious writers inasmuch as […]

Tim Walker gives five stars to this production about a highly-strung minister’s daughter who, falls in love with a local lad named John, but is never quite able to find a way to express it until it is too late.​ As a young reporter, sent out to do big interviews, I had a stock question […]

English music takes a radical turn which continues to resonate three centuries on – SOPHIA DEBOICK​ reports. After more than six years of civil war, the fabric of British society had been riven and the system of government dismembered by 1649. Religious certainties had crumbled as old power structures were torn down. In Scotland there […]

A new exhibition shows why the works of Anni Albers rank alongside the output of the greatest abstract expressionists. Claudia Pritchard reports Under ‘W’ in the Encyclopedia Britannica of 1963 the long entry on weaving was written by an expert in that craft who made a point of attributing the greatest skill to people who […]

JASON SOLOMONS on a tale of two films of the same story, and their very different fates. When we talk about entente cordiale, it very rarely refers to the French and British film industries. First of all, as Francois Truffaut infamously remarked to Alfred Hitchcock, the French think of ‘British’ and ‘cinema’ as two incompatible […]

Orpheus goes down in style at the National Theatre, says TIM WALKER Hadestown 
National Theatre, until January 26 The National Theatre likes to put on a big blockbuster in the run-up to Christmas and Hadestown is certainly that. It’s a big jaunty, lively, rhythm-and-blues re-imagining of the ancient myth of Orpheus descending into the underworld […]

Tim Walker gives five stars to this heartfelt cry for tolerance. The one thing that Indhu Rubasingham, the brilliant artistic director of the Kiln Theatre, has always got is the big picture. It’s all very well to keep obsessing about the refurbishment and the new branding she’s put in place at the venue – both […]

Ahead of the centenary of the end of the First World War. CHARLIE CONNELLY reconstructs the moving and momentous events of the very first Armistice Day, assembling personal accounts from diaries, newspaper and museum archives. 05:00 Across Europe rain had fallen through the night. In Britain it fell on the towns and cities, villages and […]

A dominant, if unconventional, Irving Berlin was confounding the critics, as music took its first tentative steps towards ‘pop’. SOPHIA DEBOICK reports Sheet music cover image of ‘That International Rag’ by Irving Berlin. Picture: Sheridan Libraries/Levy/Gado/Getty Images – Credit: Getty Images Progress was the watchword of 1913. The US was at the vanguard, with the […]