Arts and Culture

It’s a case of all aboard for murder as Eastenders star Samantha Womack plays an embittered, unemployed Rachel Watson. Duke of York’s, London, until August 17 In essence, The Girl on the Train is a creaky, old-fashioned whodunnit with ideas above its station. And, yes, a brilliantly clever pun was just intended there. Fans of […]

PETER TRUDGILL explains why some old childhood favourites no longer seem to rhyme. Many of us remember from our childhood the well-known nursery rhyme which goes: “Jack and Jill/Went up the hill/To fetch a pail of water. Jack fell down/And broke his crown/ And Jill came tumbling after.” Jill rhymes with hill, and down rhymes […]

Even when staging a musical like Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! there’s a perilously thin dividing line between magnificence and naffness says TIM WALKER. A lot of the problem is that there can be few, if any, punters who haven’t now heard all of the big numbers in a sturdy old classic like this at least […]

SOPHIA DEBOICK kicks off a new feature, looking at the musical history of a different city each week. First an examination of Berlin’s remarkably creative heritage, from Dietrich to Depeche Mode, with many in between. Depeche Mode, group portrait, Berlin, July 1984, L-R Martin Gore, Dave Gahan, Alan Wilder, Andrew Fletcher. (Photo by Michael Putland/Getty […]

The last hurrah for music hall coincided with Britain embracing a new sound, and both had a big year in 1919. SOPHIA DEBOICK reports. Rarely had the world been in such turmoil as it was 100 years ago. While the June signing of the Treaty of Versailles declared the First World War officially over, the […]

The new prime minister is part of a long – and largely undistinguished – line of politicians who have turned their hand to fiction. CHARLIE CONNELLY suggests a sense of entitlement might be behind the trend. Boris Johnson’s many current faults and past scandals have already been forensically – and necessarily – dissected, but there […]

TIM WALKER reviews The Night of the Iguana at the Noel Coward Theatre, London. “Oh God, please can’t we stop now?” wails Lia Williams as a downtrodden artist towards the end of James Macdonald’s production of The Night of the Iguana. It was a sentiment I suspect a fair proportion of the first night audience […]

SOPHIA DEBOICK looks back at a significant moment in British history as a new musical culture started to take shape on these shores. Portrait of Pope Gregory I (540-604) known as Saint Gregory the Great. By Pedro Berruguete (1450-1504) Spanish painter. His art is regarded as a transitional style between gothic and Renaissance. Dated 15th […]

TIM WALKER’s take on the ‘mind-numbingly slow and boring’ Captain Corelli’s Mandolin at Pinter Theatre, London. I have neither read Louis de Bernières’ romantic novel Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, nor have I seen the film version, which starred Nicolas Cage and Penélope Cruz. This clearly put me at a distinct disadvantage as I attempted to make […]

A new film about the touching relationship between the singer and writer and Marianne Ihlen, the muse he met on a hippy hideout in the Mediterranean, comes with an added twist- Director Nick Broomfield was also her lover. He talks to JASON SOLOMONS. Norwegian expatriate Marianne Jensen (also known as Ihlen) (right), Canadian poet, author, […]

PETER TRUDGILL on an island language which vanished after the Europeans arrived The Canary Islands are a long way from mainland Europe, but the Romans knew they were there. Pliny the Elder (23-79AD) referred to them as the Canaria, supposedly because of the large numbers of big dogs (Latin canes) which were reported to live […]

Holey Moley! It’s a miracle Theatre at its very best is miraculous, or at least it amounts to the realisation of what seems impossible. Certainly, Luke Sheppard, the director of The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾, must have been either brave or mad to have wanted to try to stage Sue Townsend’s much-loved […]

As a new decade began, two men were at work, behind the scenes, on projects that would revolutionise music. MEMPHIS, TN – CIRCA 1957: Photo of Sam Phillips (Photo by Colin Escott/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images) – Credit: Getty Images The wartime decade was finally being left behind as Britain hit mid-century, and the future was […]

Félix Vallotton may have been long overshadowed by his contemporaries but a new exhibition aims to redress the balance. The Lie (Le Mensonge), 1897. Credit: The Baltimore Museum of Art. – Credit: Archant Politics and poetry, reviews and radical polemics… the editorial mix in the fortnightly La Revue blanche, on the cusp of the 19th […]

Ibiza: The Silent Movie tells the playful potted history of the world’s most famous capital of hedonism. JASON SOLOMONS talks to the film’s director Julien Temple. STEAMY NIGHTS IN IBIZA (Photo by Stephane Cardinale/Sygma via Getty Images) – Credit: Sygma via Getty Images Like the residents and apartment holders near the Ushuaia hotel when its […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY on an astonishing travel book that tracks the continent’s myths and sagas and links its past with its present. On the day after the 2016 referendum Nicholas Jubber was sitting in a horse-drawn carriage clopping towards the fairytale castle of Neuschwanstein in Bavaria with his wife, child and a man from Düsseldorf who […]

PETER TRUDGILL examines the etymological roots of this beautiful plant. It is not a totally straightforward matter to explain how the flower we call the foxglove got its name. We can, though, at least figure out where the glove part comes from: the flowers look like the fingers of gloves; and small fingers, as children […]

SOPHIA DEBOICK looks back to the period in Ancient Greece when music as we know it began. Ancient Greek civilization was at its zenith in the mid-fifth century BC, as was clearly apparent in its art. The sculptor Myron was in the most active phase of his career and created his Discus Thrower, a sculpture […]

TIM WALKER gives his take on the comic play Present Laughter The laws of the land and the social mores that prevailed during most of Noël Coward’s life meant that he had – in common with a great many other playwrights, such as Terence Rattigan – to be subtle when it came to addressing the […]

From Shakespeare to Sherlock Holmes, howlers have long haunted writers. CHARLIE CONNELLY reports. Every author will have experienced an icy lurch in their stomach when they read of Naomi Wolf’s recent travails over her new book Outrages: Sex, Censorship and the Criminalisation of Love, which explores the ways in which the British establishment during the […]

TIM WALKER reviews Bitter Wheat at Garrick Theatre One imagines Harvey Weinstein must be flattered that John Malkovich should now be playing a character so obviously inspired by him on the London stage. Sure, he would probably have preferred it if the star hadn’t felt the need to don a fat suit, but, other than […]

As baroque peaked, the classical era beckoned. SOPHIE DEBOICK reports on a year of big names and shifting tastes. Portrait of Leopold Mozart (1719-1787). Found in the Collection of Mozarteum (ISM), Salzburg. (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images) – Credit: Getty Images The boundaries of thought and the borders of the known world were […]

‘On the surface, this is an incredibly stylish piece of theatre’. TIM WALKER gives four stars to the Chichester Festival’s Plenty. If playwrights like Noel Coward and Terence Rattigan wrote plays that largely show Great Britain as she likes to see herself, David Hare has a habit of writing about her as she really is. […]

The Jazz Age reached full swing, while blues and country were starting to make big sounds. SOPHIA DEBOICK reports on an exciting year where the possibilities seemed endless. The wounds of the recent past were still fresh. As Ypres’ Menin Gate was unveiled in July 1927, Siegfried Sassoon condemned it in verse: “Well might the […]

Avant-Garde Artist Natalia Goncharova was an Exponent of ‘everythingism’, producing work that spanned techniques and styles. Claudia Pritchard reports on an exhibition that reflects her dazzling varied output. “I am by no means European,” declared the Russia-born artist Natalia Goncharova as she pursued her studies in Moscow at the beginning of the 20th century, just […]

Diego Maradona’s spell with Napoli in the 1980s was a combustible mix of cocaine, the Camorra and some of the finest football ever seen. JASON SOLOMONS reports on the new documentary film which chronicles this extraordinary period NAPLES, ITALY – JANUARY 01: SSC Napoli player Diego Maradona pictured controlling the ball during a Seria A […]

When it comes to this aspect of language, it’s not as straightforward as a, e, i, o, u, says PETER TRUDGILL If you ask English-speaking people how many vowels there are in their language, many of them will tell you that there are five: a, e, i, o and u. If you ask Greek speakers […]

Why we have the Ancient Greeks to thank for almost all our misfortunes. In English we don’t really have a true equivalent of the French expression bon appétit, wishing people who are about to start a meal a ‘good appetite’. But most other European languages seem to have some kind of bon appétit-type formula: German […]

SOPHIA DEBOICK on a year in which music was helping to forge state identities on both sides of the Atlantic. Capitalism, colonialism and immigration were transforming the world in 1850. The founding of shipment company American Express, by Henry Wells and William G. Fargo, and of the Lehman Brothers dry goods store, by Bavarian immigrants, […]

Bold, challenging theatre which encapsulates the joy and misery of that crazy thing called love. Kiln Theatre, London, until July 6 “All you need to know about A Doll’s House is a woman walks,” says Suzannah, the bohemian actress played by Sirine Saba in Samuel Adamson’s new play, Wife. Ibsen’s classic hastened the march towards […]

JASON SOLOMONS speaks to the makers of an enigmatic and ominous film set in Budapest shortly before the First World War, and finds plenty of parallels with today. Director of Sunset, Laszlo Nemes. Photo: Laookon Filmgroup – Credit: Archant Europe is glorious yet divided, on the brink of collapse. Warring factions and clashing political interests […]

SOPHIA DEBOICK on a barnstorming year when female performers took the lead on pop. Despite April’s Good Friday Agreement, the Omagh bombing, war in the Congo and Kosovo and UN weapons inspectors being expelled from Iraq, it was another story that dominated the year. When the Washington Post reported in late January that Bill Clinton […]