Arts and Culture

The Doors’ frontman was supposed to go to the French capital to find inspiration, but found only disintegration. Sophia Deboick pieces together his final weeks. For three days after his death in an apartment at Number 17 Rue Beautreillis, Jim Morrison’s body remained at the property. Wrapped in plastic and packed in dry ice, it […]

​With the football match day programme facing an uncertain future, Charlie Connelly suggests how they could return to their glory days. The Manchester United review. Picture: Archant – Credit: Archant Towards the end of last month I could be found rummaging in boxes and tutting a lot. Afflicted by a sudden bout of nostalgia I’d […]

Charlie Connelly on a book that brings a new level of analysis to the divisive issue on which Ireland is about to decide. Amid the intense national debate surrounding Ireland’s imminent referendum on whether to reform the country’s near-total ban on abortion, one book has emerged to help truly humanise the argument and, perhaps, sway […]

Three decades after the death of Kim Philby, perhaps Britain’s most notorious spy, CHARLIE CONNELLY ponders the changing nature of espionage British spy John Cairncross. Photo: UGC. – Credit: UGC Thirty years ago this week a solemn procession made its way slowly through Moscow’s Kuntsevo cemetery on the banks of the Setun river. An open […]

With chilling talk of a new Cold War, CHARLIE CONNELLY remembers one upside from the last one – gripping fiction Salisbury was, on the face of it, an unlikely setting for a chill blast of stale air from the Cold War to blow through the streets but the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter […]

Although overlooked at the Oscars, 120 BPM is, JASON SOLOMONS argues, one of the best films of the year Some things are hard to explain. Quite why extraordinary French drama 120 Battements par minute (120 BPM beats per minute) wasn’t even on the long-list for an Oscar nomination for Foreign Language Film is a question […]

MARIKA TAYLOR studied at Cambridge University under Stephen Hawking. She remembers his inspirational teaching style. Like many students of my generation, Stephen Hawking had already had enormous influence on me long before we ever met. When I was hesitating about my A-level choices, it was his book A Brief History of Time that convinced me […]

The savaging that Milo Yiannopoulos’ awful book received at the hands of its editor provided joy for many. But CHARLIE CONNELLY had a very personal, and pressing, reason not to join in the ridicule Just before the turn of the year there was much merriment on social media concerning the manuscript of Milo Yiannopoulos’s memoir […]

What makes some men act inappropriately? Psychiatry professor PHILIP GRAHAM explores the science behind harassment It is a scandal which started in Hollywood and has spread around the globe, as sexual harassment allegations are made against more individuals, and concerning more institutions. The full repercussions are yet to be fully understood, but this troubling issue […]

In his most celebrated poems, Rupert Brooke gave a classic evocation of England. But, argues CHARLIE CONNELLY, his work has a very European context My copy of Rupert Brooke’s 1914 And Other Poems is a third impression of the first edition that was published in June 1915. The first run had only appeared the previous […]

Facing upheaval in Europe, modern art found a very special refuge in New York. So, says CLAUDIA PRITCHARD, a new blockbuster MoMA exhibition in Paris represents something of a homecoming When the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York was founded in 1929, it had no museum building, and precious little art. But it […]

Britain has never produced another hero like Dan Dare. In a landmark year for the lantern-jawed pilot, CHARLIE CONNELLY pays tribute to a figure who has shaped our art, literature, science, architecture and even musical theatre 2017 is a big year for Dan Dare. Born in 1967, he turns 50 while also marking 50 years […]

Painting Chaucer as a Little Englander, as many have done, does him a disservice. It is time to reclaim the great man from the Brexit tendency, says CHARLIE CONNELLY​ Every year on October 25, the anniversary of Chaucer’s death, I heave my copy of The Riverside Chaucer from the shelves, haul it to the sofa […]

Despite plenty of opportunities being created, when it comes to European sports books, writers are just not putting their chances away, says CHARLIE CONNELLY. If you were to name one book that pricked your interest in Europe, what would it be? Grimms’ Fairy Tales? Pinocchio? the Chalet School books? If I tell you mine, promise […]

Our culture correspondent Viv Groskop charts the many chapters in the career of a man described as the ‘most exciting new theatre writer of our time’. Florian Zeller is one of those people who, once you find out about them, you feel as if you should already have known who they were a very long […]

There is more to Alberto Giacometti than his reputation as a troubled maverick, says JOANNE CRAWFORD. The life and art of Alberto Giacometti have received plenty of attention in 2017. A major exhibition of his work was held at Tate Modern in London, and then came the release of Stanley Tucci’s biopic, Final Portrait, a […]

Plenty of books create beautiful evocations of the cities in which they are set. But far fewer succeed in elevating their locations from a backdrop into a central character. CHARLIE CONNELLY selects a few. On learning of the death of J.P. Donleavy on September 11 at the age of 91 I eschewed the most appropriate […]

Ahead of the return to London of arguably his greatest work, Glengarry Glen Ross, Charlie Connelly considers the craft of polymath and playwright David Mamet. Al Pacino on the set of Glengarry Glen Ross. Photo: New Line Cinema/Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images – Credit: Corbis via Getty Images In the mid-1960s Carol Stoll would sit […]

BONNIE GREER on the performers who can reinvent themselves for an overseas audience. In ITV’s latest hit period-soap Victoria, the French actor Bruno Wolkowitch plays the role of the wily and lecherous French king Louis Philippe. From about 1997-2006, Wolkowitch was French television’s version of Al Pacino, a brooding, intense, and sexy presence in a […]

Peter Trudgill on a remarkable discovery which transformed the way we think about languages. About 230 years ago, Sir William Jones made an amazing intellectual breakthrough. Jones had been born in London of a Welsh father and an English mother, and some reports suggest that he grew up bilingual in Welsh and English, though this […]

Between them, Juan Carlos Copes and María Nieves rescued a South American art form from an ignominious death – dancing first with love, then with hate – says CHRIS SULLIVAN. A new documentary tells the tortured story of the dance’s greatest-ever partnership In the early years of the last century, tango – without doubt, the […]

Europe may not have a unifying musical or literary canon but there is more to cultural identity than good books and fine art, according to human rights lawyer CONOR GEARTY A community without a shared culture is inevitably on a journey to oblivion, Theresa May’s citizens of nowhere heading for the cliff edge. So what […]

STEVE ANGLESEY explains the surge of protest in America’s biggest professional sports league The sensation of being stranded in darkness while facing insurmountable odds is nothing new for Colin Kaepernick. In February 2013, his San Francisco team were trailing by 22 points in the Super Bowl when the lights went off in the New Orleans […]

Between them, Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe provided one of sport’s greatest ever rivalries. But, as JASON SOLOMONS reports, a new film centred around their most famous clash is really all about unravelling the Swedish enigma Tennis was never the same after the fourth set of the 1980 Wimbledon final. Upstart, foul-mouthed American John McEnroe […]

All libraries – from the largest to the smallest – are repositories of magic and dreams, linked by the opportunities they represent, says CHARLIE CONNELLY. And we must cherish them Twenty-five years ago this week the Bosnian cellist Vedran Smajlovic sat among the burnt-out ruins of the National Library of Bosnia and began to play. […]

We have a number of set phrases in English which we use in a rather automatic and semi-obligatory way at particular times and in specific social situations – such as ‘good morning’ and ‘good evening’, ‘happy birthday’ and ‘happy new year’. There are rules about how to use these formulae. We can say ‘good afternoon’ […]

In 1972 Ziggy played guitar, Marc Bolan hit his stride and blokes across Britain made nervous moves towards their sister’s make-up bag. Here SOPHIA DEBOICK rediscovers glam Britannia David Gilmour of Pink Floyd performs on stage, London, 1972. (Photo by Michael Putland/Getty Images) – Credit: Getty Images The events of the year were notoriously dreadful. […]

Thousands of anti-Donald Trump posters inspired by Second World War public information designs have been plastered across Washington DC. One of the images features Trump in boxer shorts branded with swastikas – a version of a poster of Adolf Hitler with his pants down. The original bore the message Let’s catch him with his ‘panzers’ […]

‘Trees are sanctuaries,’ wrote the German author and poet Hermann Hesse. ‘Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth.’ Hesse’s words are prime example of how Europe has always attached a vivid mystique to its trees. Myths and legends across the continent are based in […]

When Muslim feminist SEYRAN ATES opened a liberal mosque in Berlin this summer she was met with a barrage of death threats and fatwas. But she says she is undeterred in her campaign to use enlightenment values to defeat extremism – in all forms I have been beaten up in the street, received death threats […]

Amid the undoubted glamour of the Venice Film Festival, a jaded JASON SOLOMONS wonders whether a complacent movie industry might dwindle into irrelevance – until he sees a new production which restores his faith in film Cinema needs its stars. It’s what the big screen has stood for since the silent era, after all, and […]

He was the American artist who came to embody Paris’ ‘crazy years’. CHRIS SULLIVAN examines a creative force whose work continues to inspire Man Ray is a giant in the art world. His work, The Gift – a simple wrought iron clothes ‘iron’ with nails attached to its surface – hit Dada firmly on its […]