Charlie Connelly
31 May 2023
Lyda Borelli: The first true Italian film star
So significant was her contribution to Italian film that it led to the addition of a word to the Italian dictionary: borellismo
Read the full article31 May 2023
Death of the author: How we grieve for the greats
Great writers give us more than just good stories to read, they help us define ourselves and our place in the world
Read the full article24 May 2023
Romy Schneider: The star who would be forever Shirley Tempelhof
Wherever she went, the breakout role which made her name always seemed to be at her shoulder
Read the full article24 May 2023
Grief and gardening in Ukraine
An exile’s redemptive return to track four generations of family history in the “backyard of a country that still thinks it’s an empire”
Read the full article17 May 2023
The rise of the automatic authors
Artificial intelligence can create a so-so approximation of what John Betjeman might have made of Brexit. But can it write with soul?
Read the full article17 May 2023
Niki Lauda: The driver who balanced on the thin line
The Austrian’s life was defined by a single event lasting 55 seconds
Read the full article10 May 2023
The war against reading
The American right’s culture battles are creating empty shelves in Republican states. Could Britain join in with this madness?
Read the full article09 May 2023
HR Giger: The outsider who created a monster
Nightmares were the business of Hans Ruedi Giger, who drew on his own to create surrealist art – and the creature at the heart of Alien
Read the full article03 May 2023
Horst Faas: The man who showed humanity at its most raw
The German was behind some of the greatest war images ever taken by some of the best news photographers ever to wield a Leica
Read the full article03 May 2023
The secret history of old towns
A new book eschews cosy nostalgia to explore the fractures that Europe’s picture postcard tourist traps keep hidden
Read the full article26 April 2023
Wim van Est, the man who survived Le Tour’s most dramatic descent
The Dutch cyclist should have fallen to his death after tumbling into a 1,000-foot ravine during the 1951 Tour de France, but emerged in miraculously good shape
Read the full article26 April 2023
Haunted by ghosts of the sea
Two new novels evoke the eeriness thrumming through small coastal towns, where lives wash up like the debris on the beach
Read the full article19 April 2023
Manfred von Richthofen: A gentleman warrior of the skies or a ruthless killer?
The Red Baron shot down a total of 80 allied aircraft in a flying career that made his name immortal both in aerial combat and the history of aviation itself
Read the full article19 April 2023
Sweden’s ultimate long read: The meticulous Lydia Sandgren
Painstakingly plotted, the Swedish author’s bestselling debut Collected Works weighs in at 733 pages – over a quarter of a million words
Read the full article13 April 2023
Some kind of elaborate fraud: The curse of imposter syndrome
Even the greatest of writers – from John Steinbeck to Maya Angelou – suffer from the idea that they’re about to be found out
Read the full article13 April 2023
Sartre and Huston: The collaboration tormented by an absolute aspiration
John Huston and Jean-Paul Sartre came together to create a film based on the life of Sigmund Freud, but the project was scuppered by irreconcilable creative differences
Read the full article30 March 2023
Dubravka Ugrešić, the writer who didn’t belong
The great European author, who died earlier this month, didn’t leave Croatia – her country left her
Read the full article30 March 2023
Max Ernst: A surrealist’s personal and prescient take on war
The German-born artist created his melancholy and nightmarish Europe After the Rain II during the most frightening and uncertain period of his own life
Read the full article23 March 2023
Siblings: The moving story of a family divided by the Berlin Wall
How Brigitte Reimann, once an idealistic socialist, wrote one of Germany’s great post-war novels
Read the full article23 March 2023
Giulietta Masina, the wide-eyed waif who captivated Fellini
The diminutive Italian actress, star of La Strada and Nights of Cabiria, was more than a match for her husband, director Federico Fellini, on and off set
Read the full article16 March 2023
Benjamin Myers’s novel approach to the past
The Cuddy author has a rare gift for finding the right voice for the right people in the right era
Read the full article16 March 2023
From hell to eternity: The enduring popularity of All Quiet on the Western Front
The latest screen adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s 1929 novel has scooped four Oscars and seven Baftas
Read the full article16 March 2023
Galina Ulanova: the best ballerina in the world
She was that rarest of dancers, one who could apparently transcend physics and the limitations of the human body
Read the full article09 March 2023
The stories of their afterlives
Should undiscovered Terry Pratchett stories, and other posthumous work, be published?
Read the full article09 March 2023
Fernando Rey: from fighting fascism to international stardom
The remarkable career of the Spanish republican soldier who stumbled into the film industry
Read the full article02 March 2023
Sergei Prokofiev: From privilege to persecution
After decades of success in the US and Europe, the Russian composer suffered an ignominious demise in 1950s Moscow
Read the full article02 March 2023
The magical mysteries of Ivor Cutler
Celebrating 100 years of the subversive eccentric feted by the Beatles and John Peel
Read the full article23 February 2023
Alexander Archipenko: The artist who outpaced time
The Ukrainian-American was forward thinking in his willingness to combine art with the world of science and engineering
Read the full article23 February 2023
Svetlana Alexievich, historian of the soul
Svetlana Alexievich’s books chart the horrors of history through witness testimony rather than fiction
Read the full article16 February 2023
Ferruccio Lamborghini: The farmer’s son who tweaked Ferrari’s nose
He was born into a farming family, but it was always the agricultural machinery rather than the land itself that fascinated the young Ferruccio
Read the full article16 February 2023
Fighters for their way of life
A gripping work of literary fiction – soon to be a Netflix series – sheds light on the Sámi’s plight
Read the full article09 February 2023
Roger Vadim: The director defined by the women on his arm
Some credited him for paving the way for the nouvelle vague, but the Frenchman seemed to be content being known for his wives
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