Arts and Culture

The year when music came with a sense of optimism, Orientalism – and often surrealism – as pharaohs and fruit provided the inspiration. NEW YORK – CIRCA 1925: Blues singer Bessie Smith poses for a portrait circa 1925 in New York City, New York. (Photo by Edward Elcha/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images) – Credit: Archant America […]

The Olympic year represented a high point for a self-confident and outward-looking United Kingdom, says Sophia Deboick. Psy performs at the Washington DC Jingle Ball concert at the Patriot Center in Fairfax, Virginia in 2012. Picture: ABACA/Press Association Images – Credit: ABACA/Press Association Images Britain felt like a truly hopeful place in 2012. We were […]

PETER TRUDGILL on what lies behind our irregular everyday phrases. The most usual way to make past-tense verb forms in English is to add -ed to the basic form of the verb: want–wanted, love–loved; play–played. So why is the past tense of go not goed but went? Even with verbs which are irregular and do […]

Loathed by Picasso, praised by Matisse, Pierre Bonnard is an artist who split opinion, writes Claudia Pritchard. A major new exhibition of his work shows how he still does. Nude in the Bath c. 1936-8, by Pierre Bonnard Picture: Tate – Credit: Archant ‘Don’t talk to me about Bonnard,’ protested Picasso around the time of […]

As the Second World War took shape, a big band leader dominated the year. While, from very different quarters, a Disney film and an emerging folk star signalled sounds of the future.SOPHIA DEBOICK reports. The year began with a sense of foreboding. Four months on from the Nazi invasion of Poland, Britain faced the start […]

Why does the death of a footballer produce such a particular and profound sense of pathos? asks CHARLIE CONNELLY When the aircraft intending to carry 28-year-old Argentinean footballer Emiliano Sala from Nantes to Cardiff disappeared over the English Channel north of Alderney, shock and bewilderment spread throughout the football world. In Nantes, the Breton city […]

As the Romani brought a gypsy beat from the east, Europe’s greatest musical innovator, Hildegard of Bingen, found a sound that could examine the human condition, as much as praise God. SOPHIA DEBOICK reports. Not even a century on from the Norman conquest, 1150 found England in the grip of political crisis. Henry I had […]

As a hit new documentary provides Bros with an unlikely comeback, SOPHIA DEBOICK looks back to the eccentric twins’ first embrace 
of fame Tiffany, wearing a black hat and her hand placed on her cheek. (Photo by Lynn Goldsmith/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images) – Credit: Corbis/VCG via Getty Images For Britain, 1988 was a manic year. […]

This week marks the 80th anniversary of the mysterious death of the sublimely-talented footballer Matthias Sindelar. CHARLIE CONNELLY revisits the tragic story of a true Austrian hero National hero: Matthias Sindelar’s image was used to market watches, milk and yogurt. Photo submitted – Credit: Archant Vienna has always had a strong fascination with death. In […]

PETER TRUDGILL on how some unlikely connections between European languages emerged after 2,000 years The Albanian word for king is mbret. You might think that this has got nothing to do with any word in any language that you have ever come across before. But it would be slightly surprising if you were right. Albanian […]

The castrato singer Farinelli was the undoubted superstar of an era in which musical advances were made not just with compositions, but instruments too. SOPHIA DEBOICK reports In the 1730s Britain was alive with colonial ambition, making power plays for continued dominance in the world abroad, and in possession of thrusting cities at home. The […]

PETER TRUDGILL suggests a time and a place for when and where the English language came into being English is a language which certainly came into existence rather gradually. If we want to know how old it is, the only sensible way of answering that question is to determine when English started breaking away from […]

It provided the inspiration – and name – for the race, but Greece’s Marathón also has a fascinating linguistic history. PETER TRUDGILL reports. The men’s race at the Athens marathon (marathónios in Greek) was won this year by the Kenyan athlete Misoi Brimin Kipkorir of Kenya, in two hours 10 minutes and 56 seconds; the […]

X Factor’s advent was shortly to end the traditional fight for the festive top slot. But it went out with a bang in 2003, says SOPHIA DEBOICK. Comedian Avid Merrion launches his bid for the Christmas number one spot with Bo Selecta single “Proper Crimbo”. Photo by Dave Hogan/Getty Images – Credit: Getty Images Christmas […]

A self-confident Britain holds sway, with the Spice Girls and Oasis to the fore. SOPHIA DEBOICK reports. Los del Río’s Macarena was an unlikely smash hit, but it became the biggest single of 1996. The middle-aged Latin pop duo from Seville had been knocking about since the early 1960s, but when this rumba from an […]

The singer re-emerged in one of his most ebullient incarnations, while another star unveiled his own signature move. SOPHIA DEBOICK reports That the international hit of 1983 was Culture Club’s Karma Chameleon proved that Britain still outstripped the rest of the world for boundary-pushing music. Pleasant pop it was, but its lyrical undercurrent of anguished […]

PETER TRUDGILL on some familiar celebratory Balkan phrases, and how they reflect the region’s complex linguistic history Macedonia is a geographical term which refers to an area of the southern Balkans. For some centuries, the region was part of the Ottoman Empire, ruled by the Turks from Constantinople. It contained a mixed and varied population […]

After Jonathan Franzen’s puffed-up advice for aspiring writers got a mauling online, CHARLIE CONNELLY offers his own, less pretentious tips. Midwinder – Credit: Archant Jonathan Franzen is a Serious Writer, the sort of Serious Writer who requires capital letters whenever you describe him as a Serious Writer. Most of us are serious writers inasmuch as […]

English music takes a radical turn which continues to resonate three centuries on – SOPHIA DEBOICK​ reports. After more than six years of civil war, the fabric of British society had been riven and the system of government dismembered by 1649. Religious certainties had crumbled as old power structures were torn down. In Scotland there […]

A new exhibition shows why the works of Anni Albers rank alongside the output of the greatest abstract expressionists. Claudia Pritchard reports Under ‘W’ in the Encyclopedia Britannica of 1963 the long entry on weaving was written by an expert in that craft who made a point of attributing the greatest skill to people who […]

JASON SOLOMONS on a tale of two films of the same story, and their very different fates. When we talk about entente cordiale, it very rarely refers to the French and British film industries. First of all, as Francois Truffaut infamously remarked to Alfred Hitchcock, the French think of ‘British’ and ‘cinema’ as two incompatible […]

Ahead of the centenary of the end of the First World War. CHARLIE CONNELLY reconstructs the moving and momentous events of the very first Armistice Day, assembling personal accounts from diaries, newspaper and museum archives. 05:00 Across Europe rain had fallen through the night. In Britain it fell on the towns and cities, villages and […]

A dominant, if unconventional, Irving Berlin was confounding the critics, as music took its first tentative steps towards ‘pop’. SOPHIA DEBOICK reports Sheet music cover image of ‘That International Rag’ by Irving Berlin. Picture: Sheridan Libraries/Levy/Gado/Getty Images – Credit: Getty Images Progress was the watchword of 1913. The US was at the vanguard, with the […]

PETER TRUDGILL on a grammar ‘rule’ ripe for debunking There seem to be quite lot of self-appointed experts on the English language around who like to invent grammatical rules. One of these ‘rules’, which Americans in particular seem to be very worried about, concerns among­ and between, and states that writers should only use between […]

SOPHIA DEBOICK on a forgotten TV classic from the 1970s, which treated its viewers like grown-ups. Talfryn Thomas in Survivors (1975) – Credit: Archant On the Wednesday night of April 16, 1975 at 8.10pm, immediately after the BBC 1 family film – a 1950s western starring Wildfire the Wonder Horse – Britain was hit with […]

Anthea Bell, who died last month, deserves to be remembered as one of the continent’s literary greats, says CHARLIE CONNELLY In Asterix the Legionary, where the eponymous hero and his sidekick Obelix travel to north Africa posing as Roman soldiers, there’s a scene in which the crew of a wrecked pirate ship find themselves stranded […]

After his death in the final week of the First World War Edward Connelly faded from family history, until a chance discovery by CHARLIE CONNELLY. He started to piece together the details of his relative’s short life and, in a powerful act of remembrance, undertook a personal pilgrimage, from the soldier’s place of birth to […]

Johann Sebastian Bach’s trek through Germany to Lubeck is a little known chapter in an extraordinary life. CHARLIE CONNELLY learns more. One evening in the late summer of 1705 Johann Sebastian Bach was walking across the main square in Arnstadt, Thuringia. He was 20 and two years into his job as organist at the Neue […]

A year on from rock and roll bursting on to the scene, 1956 was the moment youth culture truly took hold. SOPHIA DEBOICK on a pivotal moment. Hot on the heels of rock and roll’s breakthrough year, 1956 was an even more important 12 months in the history of music. While 1955 had seen Bill […]

JASON SOLOMONS reports from the London Film Festival on a British hat-trick and the return of Peter Jackson Josh O’Connor and Laia Costa in Only You. Photo: Getty – Credit: Archant As the last post on the annual festival circuit, the BFI London Film Festival has carved out a unique position in Europe as a […]

SOPHIA DEBOICK on a year when the pop charts were filled with vibrancy and variety.. characteristics that were about to become severely stifled There was never a dull moment to 1986. While the Sun gave us ‘Freddie Starr ate my hamster’, 30 million watched Dirty Den leave Angie on Christmas Day, and globally millions more […]

The very term used to describe the prejudice is itself born of prejudice. One of the most anti-Jewish words in the English language is anti-Semitic. In terms of the history of our language it’s a rather new word – no one used it until about 140 years ago. The term, as is well known, is […]