Arts and Culture

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 […]

Two centuries apart, Handel and Jimi Hendrix set up home in the same London property from which they proceeded to redefine music. The house in Brook Street, Mayfair both made their homes 200 years apart – Credit: Archant George Frideric Handel and Jimi Hendrix shared two things: musical genius and a London address. The Handel […]

Russian film Loveless landed with a wallop, representing the first serious contender for this year’s Palme d’Or. It’s a weighty, heavy, compellingly grim look at modern Russia and confirms its director Andrey Zvyagintsev as one of the top film makers around, even if Putin might not see it that way. Like his recent Cannes entry […]

Cannes celebrated the opening of the 70th edition of its film festival with a knotty, indulgent film about a knotted, indulgent film maker Marion Cotillard in Ismael’s Ghosts – Credit: Archant Here on the Croisette, at least, they know their audience. Ismael’s Ghosts, by Arnaud Desplechin, premiered at Cannes before wider release across France, its […]

Forget Harry Potter mania – fan fever for Goethe’s tragic hero Werther was blamed for copycat tragedies and popularising yellow trousers This time 243 years ago, in an attic room at his family home in Frankfurt, 23-year-old Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was sitting at a high desk scribbling away frantically in a sustained fit of […]

The English might claim their language is clear and straightforward, and mock the complexities of others. But when it comes to opacity, it is English which leads the way A German word recently made it into our news. The word was Bundespräsidentenstichwahlwiederholungsverschiebung. It was deemed to be newsworthy because of its extreme length, fifty-one letters. […]

A look ahead to what will be a big – possibly the biggest yet – year for books from and around the continent When you think about European literature a couple of things might come to mind. Sprawling Russian epics the size of house bricks, maybe, whose list of aristocratic characters alone could fill a […]

The unfailing brilliance of some of Europe’s greatest ever exports: cinematic villains, and villainesses Jeremy Irons in Die Hard With A Vengeance (1995) – Credit: Cover Images I blame Alan Rickman. The late British actor practically trademarked the sneering villain role back in the 1980s, first as Hans Gruber in Die Hard, then as the […]