Arts and Culture

MITCH BENN on the annual controversy over Fairytale of New York. One of my favourite things about the Christmas season is the way that new Yuletide traditions are always evolving and emerging to take their place alongside the more ‘time-honoured’ ones. A recent addition to the canon of Christmas customs is the online game Whamageddon; as […]

The shows that filled in the visual blanks of the pandemic. As so often, J.G. Ballard prophesied it all. In 1978, the science fiction writer – who has become, posthumously, a sort of laureate of the pandemic and of its social impact – foresaw that television would evolve into something dizzyingly diverse: “[O]ne will have […]

Not knowing other languages is one thing. Not knowing about them is quite another, says PETER TRUDGILL. I once happened to be visiting the linguistics department of a well-known university in the American Midwest when a phone call came in from the local police station. An officer enquired: “Do you have anyone there who can […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY recommends a handful of books to kick off your Christmas shopping. I know the C word is a touchy subject at the moment and it still feels a wee bit early to mention it somehow even though we’re in what’s undeniably December. Given that our winter hootenanny is likely to be reduced considerably […]

The Dutch city might be better known for its art, but from its Golden Age to the present day music has been at the heart of its identity. SOPHIA DEBOICK reports. Despite spending his whole life in his home city of Delft, 40 miles from Amsterdam, Vermeer is as synonymous with the capital of the […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY profiles the thinker Hannah Arendt. In 1960 Hannah Arendt noticed that Adolf Eichmann, one of the key architects of the Holocaust, was due to stand trial in Israel the following year. A decade earlier Arendt had published her groundbreaking book Origins of Totalitarianism, in which she examined the roots in anti-Semitism and 19th […]

The paintings of JMW Turner tell the fast-paced story of the modern age bursting into being. Claudia Pritchard reports on a new exhibition which recounts this gripping tale. At first glance, the silvery mound of fresh-caught fish in the foreground looks ready for pan and the plate, but the pilchards in Joseph Mallord William Turner’s […]

TIM WALKER on how Brexit helped turn actor Frances Barber from an enemy to a friend. It was a young man named Tyler who first acquainted me with Frances Barber. Six years ago, she boarded a plane at Heathrow bound for Los Angeles and he’d been seated beside her. The crew made a big fuss […]

Jonathan Sale on the centenary of a courtroom drama centred on Rudyard Kipling’s celebrated poem, If, and the continuing power of the very iffy word itself. If – and it’s a big if – I’m any judge of groundbreaking literary cases, this month sees the centenary of a wonderful example of poetic justice in action:  Rudyard Kipling […]

Jason Solomons finds actor Viggo Mortensen in characteristically ebullient mood in their over-running Zoom catch-up. Although still best-known to audiences as heroic Aragorn in the Lord of the Rings films, actor Viggo Mortensen has a reputation in the business as cinema’s Renaissance Man. He acts, writes poetry, composes music, sings, paints, runs a publishing imprint, […]

The money on offer was good, says WILL SELF, but it was outweighed by the ridicule and sense of personal failure that would have followed. When all else fails – opined the wit and poet, Christopher Logue – try Wales. The makers of I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! have certainly cleaved to […]

Overshadowed by her music, modelling and private life, Richard Luck says Jane Birkin’s career in film deserves a reappraisal – even if not all of her movies themselves do. She has many stories to tell, Jane Birkin. Little wonder her recent book – Munkey Diaries, published for the first time in English this summer – concentrates […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY on the extraordinary life and tragic death of Hélène Boucher. Yermenonville is a small village to the west of Paris, home to no more than 600 people. Its cemetery is typical of small churchyards across Europe: small, walled, and with headstones of various vintage where you’ll come across the same three or four surnames dating […]

TIM WALKER looks back on a meeting with Quentin Crisp, which left him unimpressed. Quentin Crisp was fond of saying that if you ever wanted to shock your parents, you should tell them you’d met him. I’m not sure he was all that shocking by the time I caught up with him 1985 when he […]

As police reopen the case for the third time, investigative reporter Charles Thomson reports on the long search for answers into the life and crimes of a man described as “the Teflon paedophile”. On Monday, April 9, 1990, two men entered the dock at Chelmsford Crown Court in Essex. One was Dennis King, a café worker from […]

A century after his first appearance, and with a new film out next month, which incarnation of the Belgian detective has been the finest? Benjamin Ivry exercises his little grey cells to assess the candidates. It is a classic puzzler worthy of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction… why some actors who have excelled in […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY pays tribute to the late Jan Morris, the author he credits with firing his passion for the continent. At the end of her book Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere, published in 2001, Jan Morris speculated about an afterlife where, “I shall happily haunt the two places that have most happily haunted me. […]

TIM WALKER looks at the life of Sir Cliff Richard… One of the frustrations of being Sir Cliff Richard is that newspapers only normally dispatch showbusiness journalists to talk to him. That’s limiting for him, and limiting, too, for the public in terms of their understanding of him. So it delighted the veteran entertainer when, […]

Patrick Sawer on a new book which underlines the extraordinary closeness that The Clash used to enjoy with their fans. In his eulogy to the exuberant heyday of music papers, the Ulster singer and critic Gavin Martin tells his audience, no doubt digitally-native youngsters enthralled by tales of the golden age of rock, that he […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY on a surreal awards ceremony and some sublime literature. We’ve become so used to this year’s General Weirdness that a Booker Prize ceremony without the crescendo hubbub of increasingly pissed publishers barely raised an eyebrow. The General Weirdness dictated that this year the bunfight at the Guildhall would be replaced by an audience-free, […]

RICHARD LUCK counts down his 20 favourite movies about politics of all time. Which one gets your vote? 20) The Ides of March (2011)George Clooney not only adapted, produced and directed The Ides of March, he also plays the anchor role of governor Mike Morris, a presidential candidate who’s almost too good to be true. […]

SOPHIA DEBOICK on how Sarajevo’s musical heritage helped the city through its darkest hour. To the outside world, 1,425 days eclipsed half a millennium of history. The sheer horror of the 1992-1996 siege of Sarajevo and the inter-ethnic violence of the Bosnian War obscured its past as an urban powerhouse and centre of learning under […]

Not knowing other languages is one thing. Not knowing about them is quite another, says PETER TRUDGILL. I once happened to be visiting the linguistics department of a well-known university in the American Midwest when a phone call came in from the local police station. An officer enquired: “Do you have anyone there who can speak […]

WILL SELF on a neighbourhood mystery that has been troubling him. What links Alice Walker, Langston Hughes, Pablo Neruda and James Joyce? They’re all ranged along Shakespeare and opposite Evelyn Grace. But who is or was Evelyn Grace? I don’t know – I phoned her eponymous Academy and the receptionist said: “Isn’t that something you’d research on […]

SOPHIA DEBOICK on Cardiff’s considerable musical credentials. “Singing is in my people as sight is in the eye,” says the protagonist of How Green Was My Valley (1941), John Ford’s sentimental cinematic portrait of life in a 19th century Welsh village. The South Wales valleys have indeed rung with “the sound of many voices”, as […]

A new film about three giants of football, who not only revolutionised their clubs, but galvanised communities, defined cities and shaped modern Britain. Footballing dynasties feel like a thing of the past. Certainly these days, when football itself plays out in empty stadia around most of Europe, vast bowls echoing to the sound of bellowing […]

Greta Scacchi reveals her thoughts about Hollywood and how she retained her self-respect at all times. You could be forgiven for thinking that before the Me Too movement began to get traction three years ago, men in Hollywood had behaved impeccably towards women. That of course is arrant nonsense and Greta Scacchi was one of […]

PETER TRUDGILL on the lost links that gave us surnames like Nelson, Hobson, Hodgson and Dodgson. There are not too many men about nowadays who are called Peter, but those of us who do still bear this name are quite liable to get called Pete, especially by family and friends.  In the same way, women […]

William Hogarth exposed the chaos, hypocrisy, corruption and pollution of the world around him. A new exhibition showcases his work and that of contemporary artists performing similar tasks in their own society. The first image to greet the visitor to the exhibition, Hogarth: London Voices , London Lives is a photograph of a block of […]

The two films – and a TV show – that helped make conspiracy theories mainstream. So let’s recap. This virus that you’re all so scared of isn’t actually real, just a flammed-up cold that’s been exaggerated to enslave the easily-led. But if it is real, then it was cooked up in a government laboratory either […]

Sainsbury’s devotee WILL SELF on the chain’s travails and what they reveal about a doomed attempt to make everyone in Britain middle class.  Last week Sainsbury’s announced it will be losing 3,500 jobs due to the closure of its in-store meat, fish and deli counters, and of its 420 standalone Argos outlets. The latter will […]

For both Brahms and the Beatles, Hamburg provided a hothouse to develop their talent and character, says SOPHIA DEBOICK. “I cling to my native city as to a mother” wrote Johannes Brahms in 1862. The devastating emotion of his German Requiem, inspired by his mother’s death three years later, proved this comparison was no small statement. […]