Arts and Culture

For secular people, death places the sort of minor inconveniences which, for the most part, irradiate our mundane lives, in a savage sort of proportion

One of the first women of celebrity in the modern sense of the word, Elisabeth of Austria was a gifted, vibrant woman imprisoned by contemporary etiquette

What do you get when you mix Ancient Greek with Scottish Gaelic? An almost flightless mountain bird

There are some foods that work to a near-unfathomable degree. This is that: a total, unadulterated masterstroke of a lunch

Our editor-at-large’s rundown of the pick of the week’s streaming, cinema and books

What is behind the rise in Spain of dark tourism, the trend for visiting places associated with tragedy?

Three architects pitch monuments to massacres in Lara Haworth’s debut novel about who gets to write history

Angelina Jolie’s Callas biopic sinks at the Venice Film Festival

The third Death of England play is funny and dazzling.. even watching its audience is a joy

Gentrification was supposed to be the beginning of an end. But if anything Brixton seems livelier than it has done for years

Many slang and everyday Latin words, rather than upper-class vocabulary, shaped modern languages such as French and Spanish

A raucous, funny movie about controversial Northern Irish rap group Kneecap turns out to be an impassioned cry for the power of indigenous language

The director emerged from a well-trodden European emigration narrative to become a Zelig-like figure in the early history of modern popular culture

Launched in London by a pair of Italian brothers, the much-loved I Camisa is closing after nearly a century in Soho. Why?

Jeff Young’s Wild Twin is an uncompromisingly honest memoir of a lost teenage soul, of adventure, rebellion and the echoes of memory

The photographer used his camera and the city of lights as a doorway to poetry

One Bad Guy denouement makes me think of the Republican Party’s candidate for POTUS

Our editor-at-large's rundown of the pick of the week’s cinema, books and music

Restaurants come and go but only the most lauded, talked-about and popular stick around for any length of time

How Van Gogh’s sister-in-law let go of his work and cemented his legend

There’s plenty of life in the latest 39 Steps revival

In the meantime, the Irish literary scene is thriving

The women’s 800m final causes our writer to pose some awkward questions around race

In medieval times a ford over a stream would have been somewhere to play, and this is reflected in their names

Few things in music sound more like the punchline to a joke than a millionaire mouth organist, but Thielemans forged a brilliantly idiosyncratic path

I freely admit my love of Pizza Express’ version of the powerful sauce, a bottle almost always in my fridge in salad season

Our writers’ rundown of the pick of the week’s books, theatre and streaming

As cinema shows, the coach has a kind of sacred space in American life

Bombed, suppressed, destroyed… but the work of Ukrainian artists goes on

Hanna Pylväinen’s new novel is a haunting tale of love and conflict set in the Sápmi lands of northern Europe in the 19th century

The exotic world of James Bond was also that of his creator, Ian Fleming