Arts and Culture

PETER TRUDGILL on the ultimate origins of ‘English’. During the late 300s and early 400s AD, boat-loads of Germanic people started crossing the North Sea to the eastern shores of Britain. Some arrivals had probably come well before that: since the second century AD, the Romans had been employing Germanic mercenaries in their garrisons in […]

TIM WALKER writes about his very special link with an actress from the golden age of cinema It’s almost 10 years since the last of the Mawby Triplets died, aged 90, at her home in Poole in Dorset. With her sisters, Claudette and Angella, Claudine had made 24 films in Hollywood in the Roaring Twenties […]

Many of its greatest musical talents may have left the city behind, but the success they enjoyed is built on their experiences there, says SOPHIA DEBOICK. Although it began at the periphery, as a Roman fort on Hadrian’s Wall in 122 AD, Newcastle spent many subsequent centuries at the centre of the world. It was […]

SOPHIE DEBOICK on how a city’s legacy of musical manufacturing and industry has been repurposed in the pop era A city of lakes and mountains at the foot of the Alps and 20 miles from the shores of Lake Garda, Brescia has an affinity with the finer things in life. The plains around the city […]

It might seem like a modern complaint, but, says PETER TRUDGILL, this practice has been going on since the Ancient Greeks The sound represented by our Latin-alphabet letter H has had a sorry history in the languages of Europe over the last 2,000 years or so. Perhaps the decline started in Greek. The Ancient Greek […]

TIM WALKER on Kirk Douglas, the Hollywood legend in no mood to talk When Kirk Douglas died earlier this year at the age of 103, there was quite properly a great fuss made about him. The man who had dared to stand up to the McCarthyite right in America by insisting that the blacklisted Dalton […]

SOPHIA DEBOICK on a city where music has been shaped by a traumatic history, but often transcends it. Derry has been a byword for the Troubles, its disputed name a symbol of the divide between nationalists and unionists. After a history of sectarian tension dating back to the 17th century, the Troubles began in earnest […]

PETER TRUDGILL on how a chapter from its past has left the South American country swimming against a global tide One of the most appallingly bloody wars ever fought was the War of the Triple Alliance (in Spanish La Guerra de la Triple Alianza, Portuguese A Guerra da Tríplice Aliança). Also called the Paraguayan War, […]

TIM WALKER writes of the esteemed actor and comedian Ronnie Corbett, a man full of life and enthusiasm. This is going to take a bit of explaining, but it was The Winslow Boy that introduced me to Ronnie Corbett. The late, great actor and comedian never appeared in the play, but his old friend Edward […]

CLAUDIA PRITCHARD on a captivating new book in which artist David Hockney and critic Martin Gayford discuss the history of one of humanity’s oldest impulses, to create pictures Photo: Provided – Credit: Archant As a boy, laughing in the cinema at the antics of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, the artist David Hockney was entertained […]

SOPHIA DEBOICK on two cities divided by a river but united by style and sounds. Kinshasa – capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a former Belgian colony – faces Brazzaville – capital of the much smaller, previously French-held, Republic of the Congo – just across the river for which both countries are named. […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY on how the great author ended up at his final resting place, far from where he had hoped to be. ‘Charles Dickens, the great American romancer, died yesterday of apoplexy. He was the Walter Scott of America.’ As bad takes go, that report of the demise of the great novelist that appeared in […]

TIM WALKER remembers his 1986 meeting with the distinguished star of stage and screen. When Richard Burton uttered the immortal words ‘Broadsword calling Danny Boy’ on his transmitter in the film Where Eagles Dare, it was Michael Hordern who picked up at the other end. For a distinguished stage actor whose career spanned more than […]

PETER TRUDGILL boldly goes on about one of the most controversial grammatical issues of all. English forms like to sleep, to run, and to read are technically called infinitives. In the sentence ‘I want to go’, to go is an infinitive. When we want to talk about a particular English verb, we normally cite the […]

Although nobody is coming just yet, Ireland is preparing itself for a flood of new fans who have become obsessed with the Emerald Isle through watching global television hit Normal People during lockdown. Tourism Ireland has been frantically working on producing a video and an official map of the show’s locations following thousands of inquiries […]

PETER TRUDGILL on the gradual spread of a language, the echoes of which are still heard in English today. Four and a half thousand years ago there was no such language as English. There would be no such language for another 3,000 years. But a language did exist which eventually became English, though you would […]

TIM WALKER recounts meeting Dame Vera Lynn, the singer of we’ll meet again. When it was said how wonderfully the Queen had uttered the words ‘we’ll meet again’ in her recent address to the nation, one woman would have had every reason to take umbrage. Dame Vera Lynn made them her own in innumerable concerts […]

Elvis Presley did much to promote Hawaii’s musical culture, but its native sons have far more to offer themselves. SOPHIE DEBOICK reports. Honolulu is more than 2,000 miles from the West Coast of the US, but is a place deeply embedded in American mythology. As a tourist playground focussed on Waikiki – once the home […]

TIM WALKER reflects on an interview with American actor and political activist Charlton Heston. Charlton Heston was appearing on the London stage in The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial. He was a big guy in a wig whose views on everything from gun control to gay rights had made him politically incorrect before the term had even […]

PETER TRUDGILL on a remarkable language made up equally from two others From time to time we hear about ‘mixed languages’. Maltese, for example, is sometimes said to be a mixture of the European language, Italian, and the North African variety of Arabic. But it isn’t really. Its grammatical structures show that it is basically […]

PETER TRUDGILL on a fading linguistic practice for describing numbers For the first twenty or so years of my life, when I was telling the time I always said five-and-twenty past two rather than twenty-five past two, and I continued to use that type of formulation on at least some occasions for many years after […]

The Vengaboys are perhaps Rotterdam’s best known recent export, but the city also has its very own curious genre, SOPHIA DEBOICK reports Exterior view of the Rotterdam Ahoy, the official venue for the planned Eurovision Song Contest 2020 which has been cancelled due to coronavirus. (Photo by Robin Utrecht/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images) – Credit: […]

Dora Bryan was a brilliant and unpretentious British actress. But TIM WALKER says it was life’s miseries which made her a comedy genius. Dora Bryan, visiting Norfolk in 2005. Photo: Bill Darnell – Credit: Archant � 2005 Dora Bryan was cheerful, unpretentious and as British as fish and chips. She ran a rambling hotel on […]

TIM WALKER on a man who never lost that childlike need to please and to make people happy. I first met Donald Sinden in the mid-1980s when I showed up too early at his home in Golders Green in north London. He came to the door in his dressing gown and slippers and his hair […]

The music of the Big Apple is every bit as brash, bold and brilliant as the city itself, says Sophia Deboick. The musical soul of New York is the musical soul of America. The vagaries of 20th century history have rarely dented the confident, even arrogant, spirit of the music from and about the city, […]

CLAUDIA PRITCHARD on an epic Titian blockbuster exhibition almost 500 years in the making – for which we will now have to wait a little longer. Titian’s ‘Danae’ (1551-53). Picture: Wellington Collection, Apsley House, London – Credit: Archant The memo from the artist Titian to Philip II of Spain just before Christmas in 1574 is […]

TIM WALKER looks into the life and career of Christopher Lee, best known for his portrayal Dracula. There are certain parts – and Dracula is one of them – that require of the actor playing them some sense of being in on the joke with film-goers. Christopher Lee never saw anything funny about what was […]

Actor and force of nature Frances Barber talks to TIM WALKER about Twitter battles, her tangled relationship with Labour and the hedonistic thought driving her through lockdown. At about this time, Frances Barber would have got back refreshed from a yoga retreat in Sri Lanka and be beginning rehearsals for a new play that Mark […]

With the virus restrictions preventing more than a brief daily stroll, CHARLIE CONNELLY goes in search of books that provide a bit more of a sense of journey. I miss walking. I mean, I get out once a day for a mooch about but it’s the same short route every time, nodding at the same […]

PETER TRUDGILL on the sometimes surprising languages spoken by some our greatest composers. Music is sometimes said to be the universal language; and it is certainly true that the music of the great classical composers is as well known these days in China, South Korea and Japan as it is in its original European homeland. […]

SOPHIA DEBOICK explores the musical heritage of the Japanese capital through two of its most enchanting talents. Tokyo – a kaleidoscope of neon and skyscrapers – was a megacity even in the 18th century, when the population of the city then known as Edo topped one million, 50 years before London reached that milestone. With […]

A chance lockdown discovery leads CHARLIE CONNELLY down memory lane to the Danish castle that inspired the Bard. We all have little jobs around the house that we’ve planning to get around to – for years in some cases. One of mine was going through a big box of old DVDs that needed sorting out […]