Arts and Culture

PETER TRUDGILL on how languages come up with the words their culture requires and uses snow as an example. My German-English dictionary says that the German word keltern is to be translated into English as ‘to press (of grapes)’ (for the purpose of making wine). The word comes originally from Latin calcatura, ‘stamping’, which is […]

Musicians have always reflected the two sides of Vegas, the glitz on the surface and the pathos that lies below. SOPHIA DEBOICK reports. For a place that is a byword for hedonism, Las Vegas had humdrum beginnings. A Mojave Desert rest stop on the Old Spanish Trail trade route between Los Angeles and Santa Fe, […]

TIM WALKER reviews The Girl Who Fell which is at Trafalgar Studios until November 23. When I think of the internet, and how the world was before we had it and how it is now, I wonder if Sir Winston Churchill’s verdict on Stanley Baldwin doesn’t also hold good for its inventor, Sir Tim Berners-Lee. […]

Charlie Connelly delves into the life of Alexey Stakhanov, Stalin’s superstar miner. The evening of August 30, 1935, was a warm and muggy one in eastern Ukraine when Alexey Stakhanov left his small flat in Kadievka and headed for the night shift at the Tsentralnaya-Irmino mine. The mine had been working round the clock since […]

Botswana’s capital is home to a diverse musical culture, where traditional sounds infuse many genres – not least its thriving heavy metal scene. SOPHIA DEBOICK reports Botswana is a country unlike any other in Africa. Since its 1966 independence it has been one of the most politically stable nations on the continent and has enjoyed […]

PETER TRUDGILL explains the journey along which we arrived at our use of the negative If you have learnt even a little bit of French, you will probably know that the word pas in that language means ‘not’. Pas mal! is ‘not bad’. Pas encore means ‘not yet’. Pas moi! is the equivalent of ‘not […]

TIM WALKER reviews Brian Friel’s Translation at the National Theatre. The grizzled old Jimmy Jack Cassie laments in Brian Friel’s play Translations: “I’m a barbarian in this place because I’m not understood by anybody.” All any of us ultimately want in life is to be understood – that’s how we establish our identity – but […]

For centuries the French capital has been a centre for freedom of expression, a status that has produced legendary artists and venues. SOPHIA DEBOICK reports Paris is where legends are made. Or rather where they make themselves. The icons of French music have routinely spun mythical backstories for themselves, and the very streets of the […]

Literary gongs seldom court much controversy. But, as CHARLIE CONNELLY explains, this year is different Polish author Olga Tokarczuk arrives prior to a press conference and a lecture after she was awarded with the 2018 Nobel Literature Prize. (Photo by Sascha Schuermann / AFP) (Photo by SASCHA SCHUERMANN/AFP via Getty Images) – Credit: AFP via […]

TIM WALKER reviews Noises Off at the Garrick Theatre, and reminisces on the play’s former glory When it’s done correctly, Noises Off, Michael Frayn’s comedy about life backstage, should look like a perfectly-choreographed ballet. Actors need to pass on props – such as plates of sardines, telephones and suitcases – to one another with split-second […]

One hundred years on, PETER TRUDGILL tells the story of another referendum, one which hinged on language On May 11, 1919, a Volksabstimmung took place in the mountainous region that is now the Austrian province of Vorarlberg. Vorarlberg means ‘before Arlberg’, the Arlberg being the mountain massif which contains the steep pass which separates the […]

CHARLIE connelly on the death of a poet who chronicled his city’s epic story. There was something terribly poignant about how Ciaran Carson, who died on October 6, left us just when Northern Ireland was anchored to the top of the British news agenda for the first time in two decades. Diagnosed with terminal lung […]

Broad and wide mean pretty much the same thing – they are very close to being synonyms. The Oxford English Dictionary defines broad as “extended in the direction measured from side to side; wide”; and wide is also defined as “having great extent from side to side”. Both broad and wide are also said by […]

He might have ended up as a byword for naffness, but Demis Roussos had taken an eventful and experimental route to get there. SOPHIA DEBOICK reports on the singer and other Greek greats. “Angela likes Demis Roussos, Tony likes Demis Roussos, I like Demis Roussos and Sue would like to hear Demis Roussos. So do […]

The singer Sam Smith’s desire to be referred to as ‘they/them’ throws up language challenges, says linguistics expert PETER TRUDGILL. Sam Smith has expressed the wish to be referred to as they rather than he or she. Many people already operate this pronoun system when requested to do so, and are happy to use it. […]

Battered by the bombs and the collapse of its motor industry, the West Midlands hub responded with regeneration through sound. SOPHIA DEBOICK reports. Guitarist Lynval Golding of The Specials performs live on stage during their 40th Anniversary Tour at Coventry Cathedral ruins. Photo: Jim Bennett/Getty Images – Credit: Getty Images Coventry has become near-synonymous with […]

TIM WALKER says ‘Master Harold’… and the boys is a long burn production in a time of inpatient theatregoers. For most of the 100 minutes that Roy Alexander Weise’s production of ‘Master Harold’… and the Boys runs, there is a ‘least said, soonest mended’ approach to the issue of apartheid in South Africa in the […]

For our most commonly-used words, brevity is an obvious advantage, says PETER TRUDGILL. But that doesn’t mean it always applies. On the train the other day, I was wondering why the people across the aisle from me kept saying “again”, until I realised that they were Hungarian and were in fact saying igen, the Hungarian […]

Literature has been slow to reflect the awful onslaught of Alzheimer’s. But a new book does just that, and prompts a very personal response from CHARLIE CONNELLY. Charlie Connelly’s father, George. Picture: Charlie Connelly – Credit: Archant For a condition responsible for almost one in eight deaths in England and Wales each year Alzheimer’s remains […]

From bossa nova to baile, the Brazilian city has always danced to its own beat. Sophie Deboick reports. For Rio de Janeiro, music is always the answer. Whether in tragedy or triumph, a musical response can always be counted on, and in a city that suffers some of the most obscene inequality and grinding poverty […]

Amsterdam’s golden age has been overshadowed by the legacy of Rembrandt, but a new exhibition shines a light on other artists who captured the city at its most dynamic. Adam Pynacker’s ‘Landscape with Sportsmen and Game’ (1665). Picture: Dulwich Picture Gallery – Credit: Archant A city in the right place at the right time, mid-17th-century […]

Aoife Duffin delivers a haunting mixture of fragility and defiance in this ‘stunning production’. Theatre is about melting the ice within, of awakening dormant cells, of making us more fully alive, more fully human, at once more individual and more connected to each other. I wish I’d written that, but it was in fact Franz […]

TIM WALKER called the performance a good-looking, good-natured, feelgood production One’s hopes for Big: The Musical were miniscule. The idea of making a show out of the schmaltzy 1988 Tom Hanks film – about a kid whose wish to be ‘big’ is granted – is of course inherently preposterous. What next: a huge water tank […]

Mormonism is a movement with music in its soul, from its earliest days to the most modern sounds. SOPHIA DEBOICK reports. The Beach Boys’ 1965 album track ‘Salt Lake City’ paid tribute to the place that, the lyric’s claimed, had “the grooviest kids”. Photo: RB/Redferns – Credit: Redferns In 1847 a former carpenter, Brigham Young, […]

The South Korean capital is known for its slick and boundlessly exuberant pop. Yet the ebullience belies a complex and dark history. SOPHIA DEBOICK reports. Seoul is a pop powerhouse. In just a few years, its K-pop industry has gone from a localised East Asian craze to a global force, with comic rapper Psy, of […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY on an angry book depicting life on the margins of the UK, which should be classed as one of the most important works of post-Brexit literature “It won’t be long before the statues start moving,” was a familiar refrain in Ireland when the global recession hit in 2008. Miraculous visions always increase during […]

Germany’s complex history has left it with some fascinating features, not least its pockets of Slavic speakers. PETER TRUDGILL reports. The boundary in northern Europe between the areas where Germanic languages are spoken and those which are occupied by Slavic-language speakers has been shifting backwards and forwards on an east­-west axis for at least a […]

Modern sensibilities have made Paul Gauguin a deeply controversial figure, yet he played a pivotal role in the development of portrait art, shifting the focus from sitter to painter. CLAUDIA PRITCHARD reports A head is a matter of two eyes, a nose and a mouth, arranged any way you like. So said Picasso, in whose […]

Peter Trudgill recounts the story of what happened to one of Britain’s ancient languages, Old Norse During the first millennium AD, Britain was home to four major languages, each of which had arrived from a different point of the compass. The first was Britonnic Celtic, the ancestor of Breton and Cornish, which had come to […]

Françoise Sagan lived an ostentatious and radical lifestyle when she was not working on a collection of dozens of plays, novels, and short stories, CHARLIE CONNELLY reports. On the afternoon of September 14, 1957, Françoise Sagan was at the wheel of her Aston Martin barrelling along the D448 just outside Paris. Egged on by the […]

‘A Very Expensive Poison’ is about as guttural and stereotypical as six straight shots of vodka, writes TIM WALKER Tom Brooke as Alexander Litvinenko and MyAnna Buring as Marina in A Very Expensive Poison – Credit: Archant With colour- and even gender-blind casting now commonplace in the world of the theatre, I’m not sure if […]

In the past, Estoniabs have literally sung for their freedom. And their capital city remains the crucible of this national pastime. SOPHIA DEBOICK reports. Estonia presents a forbidding face to the world. The most northerly of the Baltic states, it is a country half covered by forests, fringed with windswept islands and islets. There is […]