Review

Tales of ice and lighthouses, the ghosts of Irish literary legends and the Iliad reborn: the books you should give this Christmas

The new Swedish series boasts a plot fuelled with murder, trials and reasons why women aren’t believed when they come forward

The withering contempt Christopher Eccleston's Scrooge has for the poor and homeless hits particularly hard this year

The former Tory culture secretary and Boris Johnson superfan has written an astoundingly bad book

Ridley Scott’s epic didn’t exactly win over viewers in France

This Joaquin Phoenix epic fails to nail its big idea, or the motivation of its subject

The Canadian author only writes one book each decade. But her latest novel, Held, shows why it’s worth the wait

Celebrating a rediscovery of the Norwegian realist who used colour combinations ‘like chords sounding in perfect harmony’

The American actor's solo show is eloquent - if sometimes self-indulgent

Backstairs Billy captures the charm of an eccentric keeper of royal secrets

He wrote three operas with Mozart and ended up working at a grocers in New York City: meet Lorenzo da Ponte

A new exhibition in Basel aims to put women at the centre of the previously male-dominated Fauvism movement

The humble Friday night takeaway staple is a magnificent immigration success story

A new show reveals the American artist’s many changes of direction, from condemning racism and violence to the calm of everyday life

The latest reboot of Sunset Boulevard veers into self-indulgence

Born a century ago, the Italian author was the best kind of writer, because he understood what it was to be a reader

There was much more to Tove Jansson than the troll family that made her famous

Amid an explosion of young British talent, Sir Anthony Hopkins brings London’s Film Festival to tears with his performance in One Life

An adaptation of a Neil Gaiman novel makes for a startling production

It is eternally imperilled and eternally inspiring. A new book celebrates the great art made in and about the city that makes spirits float

A new translation of a novel on the rise of Nazism holds lessons for our current populist age

A new documentary delves into the life of the woman who outstoned the Stones

Patient theatregoers will be richly rewarded with Bronagh Lagan's production of the Paul Gallico book

How the Switzerland-born contemporary artist has left his mark across the globe

Every year, a French beauty spot devotes a weekend to UK movies. An eccentric outlier or a harbinger of a new post-Brexit entente cordiale?

A blockbuster new exhibition interrogates the role, purpose and cost of deceit and misdirection

It gave the world Freud and a host of cultural figures. But as a new book celebrates Austria’s capital, what about its footballers?

“My life didn’t please me, so, I created my life,” she once said, and it was with scissors that she did so

Richard Jones's revival displays perfectly what a preposterous activity our national obsession is

For a West End production, this show was simply not up to the mark

At a time when we have seen so much of the worst of it, this show appears to be tapping into something big

A new Netflix drama sees a 17-year-old Polish migrant return from exile in Wales to battle racism, sexism and Romany traditions