Arts and Culture

The trailblazing French actress defied Hollywood’s ageism to win an Academy Award for Room at the Top

Ben Whishaw delights his fans, but the yawnometer goes off the scale

The Noel Coward play that became a hit film gets a new lease of life

Flemish physician Jan Baptist van Helmont was the first to recognise gases other than air, and coined the word ‘gas’, from the Greek ‘chaos’

A combination of deep thinking, a fascination with the everyday and a playful wit produced some of the most groundbreaking fiction of the 20th century

Spanish beef is being celebrated in the best possible way, on the corner of two streets in the City of London

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

The innovative works of Norway’s Anna-Eva Bergman, realised in metal leaf, bear comparison with Rothko and Klimt

We are once again entering a time of introspection and reminiscence as the long summer days give way to mists and mellow fruitfulness

The rise and fall of the spaghetti western

Reports about the Olympic Games in Paris illustrate the differences in sporting language between American and British English

The Frenchman relished each project with its opportunity for reinvention, presenting a new challenge each time

A major influencer in China visited and sparked a recurrent wave of visitors eager to try the same dishes they did

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

The small town of Bodø has achieved recognition as the European Capital of Culture 2024. Now, will it also recognise one of its own?

An intelligent and fearless French novel of clear-eyed anger digs deep into contemporary morality

Thirty timeless classics shot on the continent

It is not an easy thing to say, but buying things online – specifically cheap, poorly made things – should not be as easy as it currently is

The dark daring of the extraordinary mid-century comics artist and illustrator, Italy’s answer to Norman Rockwell

Tom Stoppard’s play now seems irredeemably dated

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