Great European Lives

The winter of 1909 came early to Russia. One morning, in the house on her family estate at Neskuchnoye in what is now Kharkiv, Ukraine, Zinaida Serebriakova looked out of the window at the snowy landscape then sat down at her dressing table. Bare-shouldered, she was grateful for the fire burning in the hearth. When […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY explores the life of Georgi Markov – the dissident Bulgarian writer who was assassinated in London. At 10.30pm On September 7, 1978, Georgi Markov arrived at his home in Clapham, south London, after a long shift at the BBC World Service. He was due to return to work early the next morning and […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY on the great life of soviet Russian-American actress and author Victoria Fyodorova. ‘For all I knew Poludino was the world, and was like every other place in the world,’ wrote Victoria Fyodorova of the village in northern Kazakhstan where she grew up with her mother Alexandra, a brother Yuri, ten years older, and […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY explores the life of the legendary Polish footballer. The summer of 1978 saw an unfamiliar frisson of glamour shimmer through English football. The FA had lifted their archaic two-year residency requirement for overseas players, paving the way for Argentinean World Cup winners Osvaldo Ardiles and Ricardo Villa to arrive at Tottenham Hotspur and […]

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) […]