Arts and Culture

WILL SELF on a painstakingly assembled scale model of a long-gone Teesside neighbourhood Top hats and cloth caps off for Steve Waller, who has spent the past nine years working fulltime on a scale model of the historic St Hilda’s neighbourhood of Middlesbrough. Waller, 61, began working on the model after he slipped a disc […]

St. Louis has as strong a claim as anywhere to be the city where the sound was first heard Rock ‘n’ roll was born at 3137 Whittier Street, St. Louis. Chuck Berry’s debut single Maybellene had it all – teenage heartbreak, fast cars and a driving guitar break – and was written during Berry’s eight-year […]

Victory for France in the Euros would give Chelsea’s N’Golo Kante the kind of trophy cabinet that even Messi and Ronaldo would envy Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo are on opposite sides of the world preparing to lead their countries in tournaments that represent their last chance to win major honours. No-one of sound mind […]

The story of two places, and two women, linked by fate and separated by a body of water. Calais has always had a special place in British culture. We owned it from 1347 until 1558 after all, even if now it’s mainly known for booze cruises, Channel swims and the first trip abroad for so […]

PETER TRUDGILL on the language of the Isle of Man, and its rearguard action against the linguistic homogenisation of the British Isles If you have ever been to Ellan Vannin – the Isle of Man – you will know that from the shores of that beautiful island it is possible to see Ireland, Scotland, England and, […]

Lupin, Call My Agent and Money Heist are among the familiar names in our list of the best Europan TV series to stream, but there are hidden gems too

Twenty five years after a massive IRA bomb destroyed the centre of Manchester, LUKE BAINBRIDGE reports on how the city was reborn from the rubble Dennis Walker was the first black player to play for Manchester United, back in 1963. After retiring from football, the fluent Farsi and Arabic speaker became operations manager at the Arndale […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY looks back at one of the most improbable games of football’s long history, when a team of Durham miners took on a side of Eton schoolboys In the aftermath of the tawdry European Super League saga I found myself rummaging online for reassurance that football was once the game of the people. On […]

Tim Walker gives three stars to Walden at the Harold Pinter Theatre in London until June 12 To say that Stella and Cassie are sisters who have grown apart is an under-statement. Cassie (Lydia Wilson) is a celebrated astronaut who’s just returned from a year on the moon. Stella (Gemma Arterton) has, in the meantime, […]

A new exhibition of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood serves as a useful opportunity to focus on its female associates, be they muses, mistresses or much more When Stephanie Marrian became the first Page Three girl in the Sun newspaper in 1970 it is possible she was channelling the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Or maybe not. But she was undoubtedly, to use the […]

The Benin Bronzes have a special status in the debate over cultural artefacts taken during the colonial era. Author Barnaby Phillips explains why, and why the British Museum’s approach to the debate is unsustainable At the end of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee summer, in September 1897, the British Museum hosted an unusual exhibition. It was something of a […]

Remembering the moment when the world’s most famous sportsman was bundled out of his hotel by rebel gunmen Sport and politics have always mixed, but they have never collided quite so spectacularly as they did in the lobby of Havana’s Hotel Lincoln on February 23, 1958. That day, as five-time Formula 1 champion and possibly the […]

George Sand is no longer widely read, but once eclipsed many of the greatest names in 19th century European literature, writes CHARLIE CONNELLY

A history of the radical, revolutionary, rowdy roots of the newspaper industry make for a rip-roaring read “We are afsured from good authority that the First Consul of France – has been swallowed by a Whale!” Give or take the odd “f” instead of “s”, this could have come on the Sunday Sport archive, next to […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY on a truly epic novel which pays fitting tribute to the female pioneers of aviation One of my favourite historic photographs was taken 99 years ago. It’s of a young woman, wrapped up in a heavy coat and headscarf against a cold wind coming in off the sea, standing alone in a field […]

TIM WALKER on one of the few pieces of ‘serious theatre’ to get going after lockdown Reasons You Should(n’t) Love Me Kiln Theatre, London ***** Don’t let anyone kid you that theatre is coming back in leaps and bounds. We’re talking at best about small, hesitant, faltering steps. There’s the occasional costly stumble, too, as […]

The country's historical and recent anguish provides a strong undercurrent to its music.

From The Ladykillers to The Elephant Man, Jason Solomons celebrates some of the best movies set in London When the pandemic stopped cinema in their tracks and the flow of new movies became an online trickle, many film fans took the time to look back and catch up on classics. In the UK, one of […]

Nothing will better define this European club football season than Diego Simeone’s Atlético Madrid upsetting Real and Barcelona to win La Liga When we come to analyse the European club season that ended with Chelsea’s deserved victory in the Champions League final, nothing will better define the fight against adversity – the empty stadiums, the pandemic, […]

How, even when speaking clearly, true meaning can get lost when different nationalities communicate “Hello Tanit, hope you don’t have a hangover”, I read, nodding. “Are you able to file soon?” I wasn’t. Not soon, anyway. But I felt extremely lucky to have a English editor. Even when I miss a deadline he writes friendly emails. A German […]

PETER TRUDGILL picks apart another popular subject for pedants Are you alright? Or are you all right? Is alright one word or two? A number of people seem to feel rather strongly about this issue, and some of them are adamant that to write alright is totally not all right. They think that all right is the only “correct” way to write […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY on the woman behind an 80-year-old masterpiece, one of the most important books about Europe of the last century A couple of weeks ago a tweet by the American novelist Jake Wolff made me laugh out loud. It read, “Creative nonfiction writers be like: I first ate a hotdog when I was six […]

The Foghorn’s Lament focuses on an unusual subject that inspires a spellbinding book One of my earliest memories is of foghorns. It’s of my sister and I being wrapped in warm clothing and lifted into wellington boots, sleep-dozy because it’s nearly midnight, and taken by our parents out of the front door of our house […]

In his work, and in his life, Joseph Roth chronicles the old order that was swept away in the first half of the 20th century According to Joseph Roth his earliest memory was of watching his mother give away his cradle to a woman he’d never seen before. She “holds it to her chest, as though […]

Such is Liverpool’s immense musical heritage that the city is not overshadowed by its most famous sons Liverpool makes its own mythology. In February 1967, the Beatles released the double A-side Penny Lane/ Strawberry Fields Forever, not only creating a new paradigm for Britishness in pop on one side and all but single-handedly creating psychedelia on […]

Gender bias means that the history of art has been written by men, about men. But there are some signs that the tide is finally beginning to turn It’s been 50 years since the pioneering feminist art historian Linda Nochlin posed the provocative question ‘Why have there been no great women artists?’ – a ground-breaking […]

How the friendship of tragic poets Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, forged over long, cocktail-soaked lunches, paved the way for the rest of us In 1950s America, white, middle-class women were not supposed to be ambitious. In fact, women were respected for not pursuing their own careers and instead focusing their attentions on the home […]

Theatre reviewer TIM WALKER sees an old favourite returning to the stage after lockdown The Mousetrap St Martin’s Theatre, London ***** There was a lot of talk of a new kind of theatre emerging after the lockdowns – edgier, more relevant and representative – but maybe, after a traumatic experience, there’s something to be said […]

Was 18th century Scotland visited by people from the frozen north? RICHARD LUCK picks over the accounts of the men who might have made it all the way from Greenland. History is filled with tantalising theories of human endurance and exploration. Could the Vikings have crossed the Atlantic, for instance? Could Polynesia have been populated by migrants who crossed the […]

Netflix series Master of None has successfully negotiated a change of focus after its creator was caught up in a #MeToo scandal The first two seasons of Master of None sound awful when described – “an actor bops about New York dating beautiful women and eating at nice restaurants” – and sometimes they are. Aziz Ansari stars as Dev, […]

As club football’s strangest season comes to an end, photographer Stuart Roy Clarke shares images of fans taken during the pandemic I started The Homes of Football photography series more than 30 years ago as a love letter to this country, yet I knew that the Germans and Scandinavians and latterly the Americans revere our […]

The spread of English as a narrative language now includes the Asian island nation. Singapore, the large island off the southern end of the Malay Peninsula, is separated from the mainland by the Johor strait which is less than a nautical mile wide at its narrowest point. A number of fascinatingly different mother tongues have […]