Charlie Connelly
08 January 2025
The big-time film mogul who saw the importance of making art
Many directors might not have scaled their creative heights without Ponti’s recognition that one could make daring and challenging cinema and still turn a profit
Read the full article08 January 2025
Trump’s burning ambition
MAGA’s resurgence means that works by George Orwell, Khaled Hosseini, Anne Frank and even Agatha Christie are under threat
Read the full article01 January 2025
Eurovision’s first breakout success
The daughter of a songwriter and from a long line of composers, the woman born Isabelle Gall was predestined for a career in music
Read the full article01 January 2025
Shelter from the storm: the books to get through 2025 with
We’ll need mechanisms in place to keep us sane and what better mechanism is there to achieve that than getting stuck in to a really good book?
Read the full article18 December 2024
The best fiction reads of 2024
The story of a family’s French holiday interrupted by the apocalypse tops our round-up of the best books of 2024
Read the full article18 December 2024
Soviet cinema's reluctant dissident
There were huge advantages to being outside the Soviet Union, but the filmmaker's love of Russia bound him to home
Read the full article11 December 2024
Silvana Mangano, the star who shunned the spotlight
For a woman who never desired the limelight, Silvana Mangano achieved cinematic immortality almost in spite of herself
Read the full article11 December 2024
A literary year of grifters and drifters
A beautiful memoir about the ugly side of Europe tops our round-up of 2024’s best non-fiction
Read the full article04 December 2024
The little machine with a higher gear than the rest
The intensity he displayed in the saddle was an extension of his personality. He was spiky, surly and could bear a spectacular grudge
Read the full article04 December 2024
Will AI kill off the book trade?
An Israeli startup’s plan to use AI to publish 8,000 books a year sounds like the death of quality
Read the full article27 November 2024
The needle through which Europe was threaded
An adventurous romantic life lent almost a Zelig-like quality to the writer, constantly drawing her towards the centre of events
Read the full article27 November 2024
Karl May, the conman and the cowboy
How a habitual jailbird became one of Germany’s most famous authors by writing about a Wild West he’d never visited
Read the full article20 November 2024
The actress pursued by misfortune and tragedy
Her young daughters grieving before a grave she didn’t occupy was not even the worst tribulation to afflict the life of the Hungarian
Read the full article20 November 2024
Stories from Berlin, a city of history
From Sally Bowles to George Smiley by way of Kreuzberg and Alexanderplatz, the best books about Berlin
Read the full article13 November 2024
The bohemian travel writer always drawn back home
The troubled journalist forged her place in and around a world to which she never quite belonged
Read the full article13 November 2024
Pedro Almodóvar’s vision without direction
There’s pain and glory in The Last Dream – a patchy collection from the Spanish film-maker – but its highlight is all about his mother
Read the full article07 November 2024
The man who was born twice
The relationship between Jean Marais and Jean Cocteau was one of the great romances of 20th-century European culture
Read the full article07 November 2024
What Miss Merkel did next
If a new novel is to be believed, the former German chancellor retired to the countryside and started solving murders
Read the full article30 October 2024
The artist who embraced human imperfections
What he saw as the blandness of tradition bore little or no resemblance to the world he knew and the art he wanted to create
Read the full article30 October 2024
Beauty in a flow of words
From James Joyce and Jerome K Jerome to Eliot and Alice Oswald, a personal pick of the greatest writing about rivers
Read the full article23 October 2024
The concert promoter who took a stand
Graham was one of the most high-profile critics of Reagan’s visit to Bitburg. It was personal
Read the full article19 October 2024
The American war on literature
Across the US, the authorities are banning books. If Trump gets into the White House, the censorship could get even worse
Read the full article09 October 2024
René Lacoste, the tennis superstar who became a fashion pioneer
The Frenchman won seven Grand Slam singles titles in the 1920s before becoming an innovator in the world of sportswear and tennis equipment
Read the full article09 October 2024
Mocking the king of big little lies
After co-writing The Thick of It and Veep, Ian Martin channels his most absurd politician yet – Boris Johnson
Read the full article02 October 2024
Amália Rodrigues, the voice of fado and the soul of Portugal
The biggest-selling Portuguese music artist in history was instrumental in popularising the fado genre worldwide
Read the full article02 October 2024
Sally Rooney’s grandmaster move in literary fiction
Daring choices are vindicated in the writer’s brilliant new novel about a chess player, his brother and their family
Read the full article25 September 2024
Homage to Ruritania
The surprising origins of The Prisoner of Zenda, the ultimate swashbuckling tale of derring-do
Read the full article25 September 2024
Simone Signoret, the Oscar-winning icon who embraced age with grace
The trailblazing French actress defied Hollywood’s ageism to win an Academy Award for Room at the Top
Read the full article18 September 2024
The writer with a lifelong fascination with the nature of memory
A combination of deep thinking, a fascination with the everyday and a playful wit produced some of the most groundbreaking fiction of the 20th century
Read the full article18 September 2024
Autumn, the season for poets
We are once again entering a time of introspection and reminiscence as the long summer days give way to mists and mellow fruitfulness
Read the full article11 September 2024
The director who trusted his convictions
The Frenchman relished each project with its opportunity for reinvention, presenting a new challenge each time
Read the full article11 September 2024
Letters to a dickhead
An intelligent and fearless French novel of clear-eyed anger digs deep into contemporary morality
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