Great European Lives

CHARLIE CONNELLY looks back at the life of Soviet and Russian singer and songwriter, Viktor Tsoi. During an interview in November 2012 Mikhail Gorbachev recalled the moment in 1985 when, on the death of his predecessor Konstantin Chernenko, he became leader of the Soviet Union: ‘The cardiologist telephoned me and said, ‘Mikhail Sergeevich, Konstantin Ustinovich […]

Disco versions of the Sex Pistols, topless dancers and a singing dog – CHARLIE CONNELLY looks at the life of the outrageous vocalist. There was a glorious anarchy to the New Wave Vaudeville Show that ran over four nights in November 1978 at the Irving Plaza in Manhattan’s East Village. The building was between uses: […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY on the life of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn – the face of resistance to Soviet state oppression. He looked apprehensive in the doorway of the Alaskan Air jet that had just landed in Magadan, on the Sea of Okhotsk in eastern Siberia, from Anchorage. His eyes darted from side to side as the wind toyed […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY on the concert pianist and composer whose star shone brightly but briefly. The summer of 1831 brought cholera to St Petersburg. It was in the Neva and the canals, it was in the wells and the culverts. The first cases were reported in early June and within days the daily death rate was […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY looks back on the life of influential German writer Heinrich Boll. It was a dark, chilly February evening when Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn arrived at a remote house in the shadow of the Eifel Hills an hour southwest of Cologne on February 13, 1974. Almost exactly 24 hours earlier the dissident writer had been arrested […]

Once called ‘the face of France’, Moulin was able to unite the FRench resistance and political groups. CHARLIE CONNELLY reports on his triumphs and tragedies. The morning of December 19, 1964, heralded one of those cold Parisian days when the chill seeps right through to the bone. André Malraux, novelist and minister for cultural affairs, […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY on Bud Spencer, the Italian movie star and much-loved gunslinger. On a wide, busy pedestrian shopping street in the south-east of Budapest there is a statue. Eight feet high in bronze, it depicts a burly, smiling figure in an open-necked shirt carrying a saddle on his shoulder with a six-gun sitting in a […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY on Jacqueline Audry, the iconic French film-maker who subverted post-war cinema Jacqueline Audry’s films were sumptuous. At her peak during the 1950s she produced a succession of costume dramas set during the Belle Époque, most of them adaptations from novels in which the rustle of taffeta began as the opening credits faded and […]

Distracted by grief and anger following his brother’s terrible accident, Bottechhia overcame more struggles than war to become a cycling legend. CHARLIE CONNELLY reports. 21st July 1925: Ottavio Bottecchia of Italy chases Lucien Buysse of Belgium through St Cloud during the final stage of the 1925 Tour de France. Bottecchia went on to win and […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY profiles the fencer, violinist and revolutionary commanded of the French Garde Nationale. On April 9, 1787, at the behest of the Prince of Wales, an unusual fencing match took place in London between Mademoiselle d’Eon, a French former diplomat and spy who lived as a woman for decades, and Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY looks back on the life of Spanish singer, Rocío Jurado. The Spanish singer Rocio Jurado at home, 1976, Madrid, Castilla La Mancha, Spain. (Photo by Gianni Ferrari/Cover/Getty Images). – Credit: Getty Images One evening in December 2005 Rocío Jurado lay on a couch in a dressing room at the Madrid studios of the […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY looks back on the life of Giovanni Falcone who played an instrumental role in bringing down the mafia. One hot Sicilian night in July 2017 somebody attacked a statue in a piazza in the poor San Filippo Neri neighbourhood of Palermo. They meant business too. It took a determined effort to knock the […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY on the Hungarian-Spanish escapee-turned-footballer, László Kubala. It was cold in the back of the truck and the ill-fitting uniform wasn’t providing much protection against the January chill. The engine whined and coughed as the old lorry wheezed its way towards the border, hitting every pothole and causing the men sitting in the back […]

Charlie Connelly explores the life of Italian film director, producer and screenwriter, Sergio Leone. Few directors can claim to have redefined a single genre more than Sergio Leone. Between 1964 and 1971 he made five westerns, films that rendered everything that had gone before immediately obsolete and maintain a tangible influence on everything made since. […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY explores the life of French wax artist Marie Tussaud. The 19th century was a few months old when the call came, summoning Madame Tussaud to the Tuileries Palace. Her client was a busy man, she was told, so she should arrive at 6am. Ushered inside from the pink light of dawn Tussaud was […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY examines the life of Simone de Beauvoir, author of The Second Sex. Maybe it was a feeling of release after so long under a repressive regime, a sense of shackles coming off, but the years after the liberation of France were prolific ones for Simone de Beauvoir. Her novel Le Sang des autres […]

Different from the others, German actor Conrad Veidt goes down in history as one of the most remarkable European lives. CHARLIE CONNELLY reports. Dr Caligari was a showman in the old-fashioned mould. Drawing a crowd by ringing a handbell outside his fairground tent, he’d then sweep his arms high and wide, cape rising with them […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY tells all about Dutch professional football player Johan Cruyff. People with the surname Inglis are usually Scottish. That might seem rather strange, because the name is the Scots-language word for ‘English’ – and why would Scottish people have been called Inglis? But actually of course there would be no point in calling someone […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY tells the story of Tamara de Lempicka – a much-travelled artist who thrived on transition. Autoportrait (Tamara in a Green Bugatti), by Tamara de Lempicka. Picture: Wikipedia – Credit: Archant Not many single images can justifiably claim to define an entire era but Autoportrait (Tamara in a Green Bugatti) by Tamara de Lempicka […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY explores the life of conductor André Previn. It was the best piece of timing of his entire career. For all the hundreds of occasions André Previn had stood on platforms in front of orchestras around the world, his baton beating time, leading some of the greatest musicians in the world through some of […]

Andreas Hofer led a rural rebel army to fight against Napoleon’s troops to try and claim back Tyrol, a region of Austria that had been given to the German state of Bavaria. “You’ve been to mass; you’ve had a schnapps. Now forward in the name of God!” As battle cries go it’s an unusual one […]

Before Bardot, there was Martine Carol. CHARLIE CONNELLY looks back over her tumultuous life. The way Martine Carol told it, the whole thing had been a bit of a jape. In 1943 she was an emerging 21-year-old actress living in Paris when she was kidnapped by a notorious gangster. He was so charmed by her, […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY remembers the life of the first director to receive an Academy Award outside of Hollywood, who shaped views of Britain. Think of Henry VIII and the chances are you’ll think of a larger-than-life cross between Falstaff and the Goodyear blimp sitting at a banqueting table, tearing at a chicken leg with his teeth […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY looks back on the life of Svetlana Alliluyeva. Soviet politician Lavrentiy Beria with Josef Stalin’s daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva, USSR, 1930s. Beria (1899-1953) was First Secretary of the Georgian Communist Party during the 1930s. He began working in the security apparatus in the early 1920s and went (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images) […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY looks back at the life of Russian poet and journalist Olga Bergholz, a figure who faced tragedy and imprisonment but remained a voice of hope. There’s an eternal flame at the gates of St Petersburg’s vast Piskaryovskoye memorial cemetery, where almost all the dead of the 900-day Siege of Leningrad are buried. Around […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY looks back at the life of the French boxer, actor and first World War pilot Georges Carpentier, whose dogged determination took him from the slagheaps to the ring. For all the newsreel footage that exists of Georges Carpentier in action, the elegance of his movement and lethality of his right hand clear even […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY takes a look back at the life of French film director François Truffaut who helped found one of the most influential movements in the history of cinema – French New Wave. In the final scene of 1959’s The 400 Blows, the film’s teenage protagonist Antoine picks up the ball to take a throw-in […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY on the dancer turned spy, Mata Hari. One chilly afternoon in December 1915 the boat train for Dieppe pulled into Folkestone harbour, boilers hissing and clouds of steam filling the platforms. The shouts of the porters and the clatter of carts and trolleys mixed with the sound of slamming carriage doors as the […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY on the remarkable Czech backstory of cinema great Herbert Lom. In the early months of the Second World War Herbert Lom answered a knock at the door of his London home to find a burly policeman standing on the doorstep eyeing him warily. “Care to explain this, sir?” the officer said, holding out […]

Bonatti grew up in the Po Valley among the devastation of the Second World War, reading Jack London, and dreaming of escaping poverty for a life of adventure at sea. At the end of July a group of Italians made its way gingerly towards the unconquered summit of K2 hoping that a successful assault would […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY recounts the extraordinary and ultimately tragic life of Giuseppe Campari, a man who combined opera with motorsport. Giuseppe Campari cut an unlikely figure for a racing driver. For one thing he weighed in at a shade under 16 stone, unthinkable for a Grand Prix star today and exceptional even in the early days […]

Charlie Connelly looks at the life of make-up mogul Max Factor On 5 February 1904 30-year-old Maksymilian Faktorowicz stepped off the gangplank of the SS Moltke onto the New York quayside and entered the vast immigration shed at Ellis Island ahead of his wife Esther, known as Lizzie, and their three young children. The new […]