Arts and Culture

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 […]

For three decades of the last century, Jacques Cousteau was without doubt one of the best-known Frenchmen in the world. Throughout the 1950s, 60s and 70s, the pioneering diver, film-maker and adventurer captured the imagination of millions, sailing around the world on his self-constructed ship, Calypso, bringing images of the undersea world that had never […]

Parisians might like to claim a link for their city back to ancient Greece. In fact the stronger connection is a Yorkshire one The capital of France has many names. In the Gaelic of Ireland it is known as Páras; the Finnish name is Pariisi; it is called Parijs in Dutch; and in Lithuanian it […]

The epitaph for the Battle of Passchendaele – as with so much of our understanding of the First World War – came from a British war poet. But what of their German counterparts? We explore the poetry that emerged from the other side of no-man’s land ‘I died in hell,/ (They called it Passchendaele),’ wrote […]

Is Europe’s biggest ever movie Europe’s biggest ever flop? Cult director Luc Besson talks about his new sci-fi epic Valerian ‘The film is made, it’s my baby … don’t touch my baby, or I’ll kill you’ Is Europe’s biggest ever movie Europe’s biggest ever flop? JASON SOLOMONS talks to cult director Luc Beeson about his […]

The mid-90s saw the triumph of two very different double acts – Robson and Jerome and the Gallagher brothers. Jerome Flynn and Robson Green – Credit: PA Archive/PA Images Robson and Jerome – the stars of ITV’s military drama Soldier Soldier – double A-side Unchained Melody/(There’ll Be Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs of Dover was […]

The new film Dunkirk is one of the greatest depictions of war on screen. But despite its anti-war message it also comes with some pretty heavy baggage Fionn Whitehead in Dunkirk, Christopher Nolan, 2017 – Credit: Cover Images Shell-shocked. That’s how they describe Cillian Murphy’s shivering soldier, rescued from a sinking hull by Mark Rylance’s […]

Not quite ready to laugh about Brexit? This 1960s comic classic brilliantly captures a sense of the undeniable farce the referendum vote has triggered A post shared by Vinylcollection (@vinylhoard) on Mar 5, 2017 at 4:17am PST The comic novel is one of the hardest things in literature to get right. Indeed, when you consider […]

In Romanian Moldavia,the Csángós are oppressed by their Romanian neighbours and misunderstood by their Hungarian ‘relatives’. Photo: Contributed – Credit: Archant Hungarian is a language which is generally considered to have no close linguistic relatives, in any sense of the word ‘close’. Its nearest linguistic relations seem to be the Mansi and Khanty languages, which […]

A victim of bad timing and Nazi disapproval meant the curiously-titled Schlump vanished into obscurity. But it has been recently re-evaluated and its anonymous author unmasked. Hans Herbert Grimm – Credit: Archant Alone In Berlin opened in British cinemas last week starring Brendan Gleeson and Emma Thompson as the working class couple Otto and Anna […]

When American rock met European art – a bizarre chapter in rock history to which countless other acts, from David Bowie onwards, owe a debt of gratitude. Salvador Dali, Spanish surrealist painter – Credit: PA Archive/PA Images As a solo act Alice Cooper is known as a golf-playing born-again Christian, a preacher’s son who played […]

Why do officials opt for formal phrases when other more instinctive, natural-sounding alternatives are available? On flights coming into London, airline passengers often hear messages from the cabin crew along the lines of ‘we are about to commence our descent into Heathrow airport’. Anybody who knows anything about English will recognise that this isn’t anything […]