Charlie Connelly
16 June 2022
Fritz Walter: The World Cup hero whose life was saved by football
The 1954 West Germany captain will always be remembered for the Miracle of Bern but an earlier game was far more important
Read the full article16 June 2022
A continent obsessed with looking back
A newly translated novel portrays Europe as a dilapidated hotel that’s wallowing in nostalgia
Read the full article09 June 2022
Isabelle ‘Ultra Violet’ Collin Dufresne: The Factory superstar closest to being Warhol’s muse
A self-confessed “unleashed exhibitionist, chasing headlines”, Collin Dufresne lived the life but on her terms
Read the full article09 June 2022
The ultimate in shelf gratification
Spine-tingling stories of our relationship with the most perfect format of them all.. the book
Read the full article02 June 2022
Jean Arp: The living embodiment of the absurdity of borders and barriers
The early leader of the Dadaist movement blurred the boundaries of style and genre, writing poetry as good as his art, making sculptures as good as his collages
Read the full article02 June 2022
She got on her bike and looked for the world
The death of the travel writer Dervla Murphy marks the end of an era of great adventurers
Read the full article26 May 2022
The unreliable narrators of audiobooks
A new auto-narration service turns any book into an audio version. And it’s terrible
Read the full article26 May 2022
Joseph Haydn: The composer who brought happiness to John Keats’ last days
He is underrated today compared to the likes of Mozart and Beethoven, but Haydn’s impact on European classical music is immense
Read the full article19 May 2022
Léo Valentin: The birdman who danced with gravity
The French daredevil whose luck ran out in front of two young future Beatles
Read the full article19 May 2022
The flight of Russia’s greatest wit
When Teffi grew sceptical of the revolution, she headed for Paris, writing a masterpiece on the way
Read the full article12 May 2022
Fanny Mendelssohn: The gifted composer denied a glittering career
She may have been at least as gifted, if not more so than her illustrious brother but Fanny was a woman, making any kind of career in music off limits
Read the full article12 May 2022
Why won’t men read women?
The reluctance of men to explore the wealth of outstanding fiction by female writers is baffling
Read the full article05 May 2022
Helena Blavatsky: The idiosyncratic occultist who divided opinion
Guru or phoney, even in death Helena Blavatsky's spiritual teachings continued to attract admirers
Read the full article05 May 2022
The TikTok book boom
How the video social network has raised sales figures and revived forgotten titles
Read the full article28 April 2022
Inger Stevens: The actress who felt she was on borrowed time
What appears to be the inevitable tragedy of Inger Stevens began long before she arrived in Hollywood and long before she left Sweden for the US
Read the full article28 April 2022
Laughter lines: why don’t we take comedy more seriously?
Comedy is regarded as the lowest form of writing. It should be considered among the highest
Read the full article21 April 2022
Miguel de Cervantes: Spain’s ever-elusive greatest writer
Even inside his own monogrammed funeral casket the writer of Don Quixote remains an enigma
Read the full article21 April 2022
Michel Houellebecq: the end?
The latest – and last? – novel by Michel Houellebecq, France’s most controversial writer, takes on politics
Read the full article07 April 2022
Michael Curtiz: The brusque workaholic director who brought the world Casablanca
His polymathic attitude to genres and prolific output mean he is rarely spoken of in the same awed tones as a Hitchcock or Capra, but Curtiz was as much of a craftsman as any Hollywood great
Read the full article07 April 2022
Books that were lost for words
The works by great authors that were left on trains and buses... or accidentally smoked
Read the full article31 March 2022
Eleanor of Aquitaine: The queen with a remarkable life and influence
Her posthumous reputation dictated by centuries of almost exclusively male gatekeepers, history has not been kind to the queen of both France and England
Read the full article31 March 2022
The magical origins of fairy tales
The surprising European roots of stories like Beauty And The Beast reach back to the Bronze Age
Read the full article24 March 2022
Mantovani: The conductor who brought glamour and colour into millions of lives
With more than 100m albums sold, the Anglo-Italian could afford to be sanguine about critical coolness towards his work
Read the full article24 March 2022
The overdue return of the book festival
Online events have kept us going during Covid, but nothing can replace the real thing
Read the full article17 March 2022
Lili Damita: The Folies Bergères dancer who became one half of Hollywood’s most tempestuous romance
Lili Damita began her life as a revue star, ended it as a broken-hearted recluse and married Errol Flynn in between
Read the full article17 March 2022
A tyrant’s trouble and strife
A former journalist’s debut novel explores our fascination with the partners of dictators
Read the full article10 March 2022
Taras Shevchenko: The poet who dedicated his life to Ukrainian self-determination
Few nations can boast a cultural figure so enmeshed with the very essence of their national identity as Taras Shevchenko, writes CHARLIE CONNELLY
Read the full article10 March 2022
Books that explain Ukraine
One of the best ways to understand the national psyche is to delve into its rich library of literature
Read the full article03 March 2022
Franz Mesmer: The remarkable Austrian physician who unwittingly invented hypnosis
CHARLIE CONNELLY on a charming and bewitchingly charismatic medical practitioner whose methods were declared hokum after long keeping the elite mesmerised
Read the full article03 March 2022
Escaping Europe for love: a queer love story about migration
Hannah Kent’s most ambitious historical novel yet is a queer love story about migration from claustrophobic convention
Read the full article24 February 2022
Annie Girardot: The beloved French actor who became the face of Alzheimer’s
CHARLIE CONNELLY on a French cinema legend who always made something extraordinary out of the ordinary
Read the full article24 February 2022
John Steinbeck: Of Mice and Frenchmen
The most American of writers was a Europhile whose time in Paris produced a lost classic
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