Arts and Culture

Oil is fine. Sport tells us so: whispering to us in our dreams, dropping subtle hints every time we turn on the sports channels

Simon Williams has written a very clever and thoughtful play with an unusually sure grasp of the human condition

To the end, the German remained convinced that revolution was in the best interests of the people

How direct contact with Welsh and Gaelic speakers left its mark on the migrant tribes who moved into what is now Germany

How a Swiss DJ and a British label turned an old tape of Bulgarian singers into a global underground hit

Leandro Carreira’s skill with shellfish and fish is expert. Here is his dish of tiger prawns with almonds and ginger

Italian writer Veronica Raimo’s remarkable Lost On Me is yet another example of why we need more translated European fiction

The German artist was an immodest man with little to be modest about

As the World Cup looms, rugby union is in flux. What remains constant is the beauty of many of its European homes

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