Eurofile

The new film Dunkirk is one of the greatest depictions of war on screen. But despite its anti-war message it also comes with some pretty heavy baggage Fionn Whitehead in Dunkirk, Christopher Nolan, 2017 – Credit: Cover Images Shell-shocked. That’s how they describe Cillian Murphy’s shivering soldier, rescued from a sinking hull by Mark Rylance’s […]

Not quite ready to laugh about Brexit? This 1960s comic classic brilliantly captures a sense of the undeniable farce the referendum vote has triggered A post shared by Vinylcollection (@vinylhoard) on Mar 5, 2017 at 4:17am PST The comic novel is one of the hardest things in literature to get right. Indeed, when you consider […]

In Romanian Moldavia,the Csángós are oppressed by their Romanian neighbours and misunderstood by their Hungarian ‘relatives’. Photo: Contributed – Credit: Archant Hungarian is a language which is generally considered to have no close linguistic relatives, in any sense of the word ‘close’. Its nearest linguistic relations seem to be the Mansi and Khanty languages, which […]

We explore the wonders of European languages with some of the continent’s quirkiest sayings 1. leben wie die Maden im Speck (German) to live like a maggot in bacon (ie, live the life of Riley) 2. van een kale kip kan je geen veren plukken (Dutch) you can’t pluck feathers from a bald hen (you […]

A victim of bad timing and Nazi disapproval meant the curiously-titled Schlump vanished into obscurity. But it has been recently re-evaluated and its anonymous author unmasked. Hans Herbert Grimm – Credit: Archant Alone In Berlin opened in British cinemas last week starring Brendan Gleeson and Emma Thompson as the working class couple Otto and Anna […]

When American rock met European art – a bizarre chapter in rock history to which countless other acts, from David Bowie onwards, owe a debt of gratitude. Salvador Dali, Spanish surrealist painter – Credit: PA Archive/PA Images As a solo act Alice Cooper is known as a golf-playing born-again Christian, a preacher’s son who played […]

Why do officials opt for formal phrases when other more instinctive, natural-sounding alternatives are available? On flights coming into London, airline passengers often hear messages from the cabin crew along the lines of ‘we are about to commence our descent into Heathrow airport’. Anybody who knows anything about English will recognise that this isn’t anything […]

Two centuries apart, Handel and Jimi Hendrix set up home in the same London property from which they proceeded to redefine music. The house in Brook Street, Mayfair both made their homes 200 years apart – Credit: Archant George Frideric Handel and Jimi Hendrix shared two things: musical genius and a London address. The Handel […]

Mind-boggling palindromes and decidedly odd tongue twisters Tongue Twisters From the well-known line ‘around the rugged rock, the ragged rascal ran’ to the awkward phrase ‘red leather, yellow leather’ one aspect of mastering a language is being able to master its tongue twisters. And they are always decidedly odd sentences: Combien de sous sont ces […]

Russian film Loveless landed with a wallop, representing the first serious contender for this year’s Palme d’Or. It’s a weighty, heavy, compellingly grim look at modern Russia and confirms its director Andrey Zvyagintsev as one of the top film makers around, even if Putin might not see it that way. Like his recent Cannes entry […]

Cannes celebrated the opening of the 70th edition of its film festival with a knotty, indulgent film about a knotted, indulgent film maker Marion Cotillard in Ismael’s Ghosts – Credit: Archant Here on the Croisette, at least, they know their audience. Ismael’s Ghosts, by Arnaud Desplechin, premiered at Cannes before wider release across France, its […]

By now, everyone has heard of Hygge, right? These 60 European words with no English equivalent will excite wordsmiths and fans of unusual phrases Poronkusema (Finnish) The distance equal to how far a reindeer can travel without a comfort break (about 5 kilometres) (literally, reindeer’s piss) Campanilismo (Italian) Local pride, attachment to the vicinity (literally, […]

Forget Harry Potter mania – fan fever for Goethe’s tragic hero Werther was blamed for copycat tragedies and popularising yellow trousers This time 243 years ago, in an attic room at his family home in Frankfurt, 23-year-old Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was sitting at a high desk scribbling away frantically in a sustained fit of […]

The English might claim their language is clear and straightforward, and mock the complexities of others. But when it comes to opacity, it is English which leads the way A German word recently made it into our news. The word was Bundespräsidentenstichwahlwiederholungsverschiebung. It was deemed to be newsworthy because of its extreme length, fifty-one letters. […]

A look ahead to what will be a big – possibly the biggest yet – year for books from and around the continent When you think about European literature a couple of things might come to mind. Sprawling Russian epics the size of house bricks, maybe, whose list of aristocratic characters alone could fill a […]

The unfailing brilliance of some of Europe’s greatest ever exports: cinematic villains, and villainesses Jeremy Irons in Die Hard With A Vengeance (1995) – Credit: Cover Images I blame Alan Rickman. The late British actor practically trademarked the sneering villain role back in the 1980s, first as Hans Gruber in Die Hard, then as the […]

Bernard Sumner recounts his cultural European journey, from the early days of Joy Division to New Order's latest album

In the mid-nineties I was living in Penge, south London, and I was on the dole. A pretty harsh double whammy in anyone’s book. I’d spend my days laying on the sofa feeling sorry for myself, finding my swooning self-pity resonating at regular intervals with a particular sound that drifted in from outside; a mournful, […]