Arts and Culture

Cleopatra invented celebrity scandal, wrecked marriages and careers and – 60 years on – is still the second most expensive film ever made

The return of La Cage Aux Folles, the show that proved too much for Thatcher-era Britain

Portuguese comedian André De Freitas is on a mission to put his country on the map, one joke at a time

Girls need to see women in the role of coaches and managers at all levels of the game

In small town in northern France, the art of producing beautiful objects from shells is being kept alive

There is only one solution to the plethora of cookery programmes cluttering up the TV schedules, and that’s to eat Gregg Wallace

The linguistic makeup of the British Isles was partly determined by three battles – in Yorkshire, Builth Wells and Culloden

This dish is worth the trek down to The Gurnard's Head in west Cornwall. I, for one, will be returning for another sample

A former Belgian TV star who became the toast of France, Virginie Efira is little-known here. Is it time for a breakthrough?

From the ancient Mediterranean through 1960s Ireland to modern-day Appalachia, reads that will transport you

The museum that masks Erdoğan’s contempt for Turkey’s artists

Few writers have been able to distil the world’s most complex themes and turn them into absorbing fiction as well as Conrad

Instead, we have dumbed-down political and commercial interests masquerading as purveyors of news, lurching from one spasm to another

What I am discovering, in re-reading his novels, is the immense capacity not only of his mind, but of his humanity

A troubled shoot and underwhelming reviews almost spelled the end of director Sam Peckinpah’s career

The production is intelligent, well-acted, but oh, so boring

Adam Penford’s production of the classic musical speaks to our populist times

There are two very good reasons why men should embrace skirt-wearing

English had been rooted in the northern hemisphere for centuries – until the transportation of convicts in the 1700s

Few directors have mined their internal anguish and lived experience as deeply as Bergman

A new book rediscovers the power and subtlety of Carel Fabritius, the forgotten master of the Dutch golden age

There’s far more to Irish cinema than the pain and cliches of Colin Farrell’s dark comedy – as a recent Galway film festival showed

This cod dish is exquisitely considered and delicate, but doable in the home

Spain's rock’s greatest frontman was silenced by “sand in my lungs”. Now, miraculously, he’s back

A new version of an Italian classic comes to the UK, in more ways than one

No-one else wrote like the Czech author, a man who rejected our ‘foolish certainties’ and defined the European novel for the modern age

The death of the Czech-French novelist made me wonder if I exiled myself, just to get out of Ronald Reagan’s America

Aqua were right: we’re all Barbie girls and we’re all living in a Barbie world

Whatever her outlet, the Spanish writer always derived immense pleasure from reactions to her work and never lost her gratitude

The Angles and the Saxons came to these shores across the North Sea and gave their names to the different areas they settled in

Lina Stores has looked further afield – to America, essentially – than the Ligurian hills for inspiration

The author lives on in a Barcelona conference which asks what he would make of the upcoming Spanish election and Franco’s legacy