Arts and Culture

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 […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY on pair of new releases, their contrasting receptions and authors, and what they tell us about Britain today. Author Kerry Hudson has published the “astonishing” tale of childhood poverty, Lowborn. Photo: Nick Tucker – Credit: Archant It’s not often I enjoy seeing an author getting an absolute savaging from reviewers but the way […]

PETER TRUDGILL tells the story of Norn, now vanished from the British Isles, though some of its sounds still linger. Philologists generally divide the Scandinavian languages into two historical branches: eastern and western. Swedish and Danish fall into the Eastern Scandinavian division, while Norwegian, Faroese and Icelandic form the Western Scandinavian languages, the Faroe Islands […]

For 500 years, Verrocchio has been overshadowed by his more famous pupil, Leonardo Da Vinci. Claudia Pritchard reports on a new exhibition attempting to draw him into the limelight. The distinctions between painter, sculptor, goldsmith and architect were more blurred in 15th century Italy than today, and it was not uncommon for artists and craftsmen […]

TIM WALKER reviews Orpheus Descending at the Menier Chocolate Factory in London. I’m on a theatrical bender without end, and, take it from me, I’m on the hard stuff. I’ve downed three Arthur Millers in quick succession and now it’s time for a shot of Tennessee Williams, who is, quite frankly, right up there with […]

Its author might now be deeply unfashionable, but that shouldn’t put us off The Jungle Book, says CHARLIE CONNELLY. The British poet, Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), is known for his verse collections and animal stories, including the Jungle Books and Just So Stories. Picture: National Portrait Gallery, London. – Credit: Bettmann Archive Who among us doesn’t […]

These days we hear the word like, meaning ‘similar to’, quite a lot. In fact, in the speech of many younger people today it seems to occur, like, all the time. But it is a word with an extraordinarily interesting and complex history, and one which is not completely understood. One fascinating aspect of its […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY finds a true sense of patriotism in a collection of poems that tries to wrest that word back from nationalists. Chinese Spring by Christopher New will be published later this month to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. – Credit: Archant One of the more frustrating aspects of the […]

Two deaths overshadowed an ominous 12 months for Britain and the planet. SOPHIA DEBOICK reports. David Bowie during his concert in West Berlin in front of the Reichstag building on the 6th of June in 1987. Photo: DPA/PA Images – Credit: DPA/PA Images According to a Mayan prophecy, doomsday was set for December 2012. In […]

Fifty years ago saw the most controversial Eurovision Song Contest yet held. SOPHIE DEBOICK looks back to an event that began with intrigue and ended in farce. Spanish dictator General Francisco Franco. Photo: Dominique BERRETTY/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images – Credit: Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images Eurovision is rarely without a row, but this year’s contest – […]

As the Premier League draws to a close, PETER TRUDGILL explores the meanings behind some of its biggest names. As is well known to most English football fans – and to the entire population of Norway over the age of three – the manager of Manchester United is called Ole Gunnar Solskjær. Like very many […]

While European sounds veered towards the melancholy, and often morose, America was tuning in to something far more effervescent. SOPHIA DEBOICK reports. The Victorian age was being left behind, but in 1904 the western world was still torn between civilized modernity and brutal primitivism. It was the era of the New Imperialism, and April’s Entente […]

His musical talent and passion might have been overshadowed by other elements of his reign, but Henry VIII deserves his reputation as a king with an ear for a tune, says SOPHIA DEBOICK Henry VIII is known as a musician monarch, but it is a characterisation based on a song he almost certainly didn’t write. […]

Almost by chance, CHARLIE CONNELLY finds himself engrossed in a timely novel set in a Paris beset by rising floods. Most of the books featured in these pages I buy myself. I hear about them, I buy them, I write about them. I’m also sent review copies of forthcoming books and if the right book […]

Still life may lack the drama and passion of other forms of art. But, as CLAUDIA PRITCHARD discovers at an exhibition of one of its great proponents, it is no less intense Battle scenes, expansive nudes, eye-popping abstracts and ravishing views compete in the art gallery to catch the eye, with their scale of ambition, […]

While the charts were filled with much that was bland, 1948’s standout hits displayed technical innovation and an inspired slice of weirdness. NEW YORK – CIRCA 1949: Singer Patti Page poses for a portrait circa 1949 in New York City, New York (Photo by James Kriegsmann/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images) – Credit: Archant The war may […]

The story of how a little corner of Wales retains a very English flavour. If you look at a map of Wales, you will see that the majority of the places in the country bear unmistakably Welsh-language names: Aberystwyth, Caernarfon, Ffestiniog, Llanelli, Machynlleth, Pwllheli, Ystradgynlais. Certainly no one would ever suppose that Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant was somewhere […]

Of two major new exhibitions dedicated to Vincent Van Gogh, one focuses on the artists he admired at the beginning of his career, while the other looks at an artist who looked up to him. With its neat fields and slender trees that pierce a heavy sky, a single picture plays a pivotal role in […]

As a new initiative to encourage the reading of fast fiction is launched, CHARLIE CONNELLY sings the praises of short-form literature. ‘For sale: baby shoes, never worn’ is the famous response attributed to Ernest Hemingway when challenged to write an entire story in six words. This was the ultimate short story and the quickest of […]

Come rain or shine, CHARLIE CONNELLY has swum in the Channel every day since last summer. He explains how it can boost your energy and self-esteem. If you look closely at the photograph above, you’ll see that between the frost-covered shingle and those majestic massing clouds there’s a tiny speck of a person. That person […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY on a reissued classic that celebrates wanderlust and everything that Brexit seeks to deprive us of. Of all the rage-inducing aspects of the last three years, two comments above all continue to have me grinding my teeth and occasionally waking up shouting in the middle of the night. Both of them came from […]

A vintage year for the industry saw the most No.1s ever, as attempts to greet the new millennium with gravitas fell flat. SOPHIA DEBOICK reports. The Millennium Dome summed up the pricked pomposity of the year 2000. Tony Blair called it ‘a triumph of confidence over cynicism, boldness over blandness, excellence over mediocrity’. In the […]