Communities, culture and global affairs.
Adultery is a moreish series starring Romola Garai and Dominic Cooper. Plus, hit gang thriller This City Is Ours is back. Here’s what to watch this evening 9pm, ITV1 Continue reading...
The Guardian ·
Shortlisted for the Booker and Baillie Gifford prizes respectively, the novelist and biographer talk about working and living together – and giving a voice to Black queer history The literary power couple is a historically seductive concept. Two writers sharing a life, their private and creative worlds entwined, each becoming witness to and critic of the other’s work. Think Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul…
The Guardian ·
Sadler’s Wells, London Alina Cojocaru astonishes in John Neumeier’s Ghost Light, an ethereal meditation on time, while Glen Tetley’s Firebird has much to cherish A ghost light is the name for a single lamp left on stage when a theatre is dark, and one glows throughout John Neumeier’s ballet Ghost Light. Also never not glowing is Alina Cojocaru, superlative ballerina and guest dancer with London City Ballet, who…
The Guardian ·
Historic England archaeologist says some inns’ claims to date back 1,000 years are inaccurate and oldest is from 1430 With their low ceilings, timber beams and roaring fires, many of England’s inns lay claim to being the oldest in the land and to have been visited by Vikings and Saxons. But an archaeologist who worked on behalf of Historic England says not one of the more than two dozen pubs that make this claim…
The Guardian ·
Jack Lowden, Callum Turner and Josh O’Connor are rumoured to be the final candidates taking screentests this weekend. So how can they best prepare? And who is likely to triumph? This weekend, the identity of the next James Bond is finally expected to be known – to the insiders, at least. According to reports, a number of youngish British actors – definitely three, possibly five – will have their final screen…
The Guardian ·
Celia’s guffs, Richard’s gaffes, Claudia’s glorious knitwear – The Traitors has become the most successful show on the planet. The creators and the queen of the castle herself talk exploding pirate ships, becoming evil and Barry the owl It all began on a Dutch trading ship in 1628. No, really. When the Batavia set sail from Amsterdam, it crashed and the shipwrecked survivors were left stranded on a tiny island…
The Guardian ·
A sumptuous collection of fairytales; a dreamy Minotaur retelling; the explosive finale of the YA Torch Trilogy and more Dogs, Dogs, Dogs by John Devolle, Pushkin, £12.99 “Old dogs, young dogs, dogs on wheels, dogs that want to eat your meals” – this “very silly book about dogs” is a polychromatic picture-book treat for little canine fans, full of bold graphic artwork and audacious rhymes. More! by Ged Adamson,…
The Guardian ·
The author of the global sensation on being inspired by Harper Lee, the craft of Joan Didion, and the joys of rereading Louisa May Alcott My earliest reading memory I have a very clear memory of reading Fun With Dick and Jane. I was four years old, and my dad wrote each word on a chalkboard. I memorised them, then opened the book and read them back to him. I couldn’t believe it. It felt like magic! When I was…
The Guardian ·
The Friends alum makes up half of a messy and pretentious comedy drama that boasts some visual panache but is dragged down by a confused tone You could be forgiven, upon watching the first scene of Junk, for believing that this debut feature will boldly, perhaps ill-advisedly, dare to satirize the industry it’s purporting to join. At a swanky restaurant in LA, four people aglow with self-importance embark on the…
The Guardian ·
No screaming is allowed in the spooky spin-off, but the stars are only in danger of cracking up over these golden comedy moments. Even Jack Dee looks delighted to be there! British comedy is a broad church united by a simple adage: less is more. The most acclaimed and beloved shows – Fawlty Towers, The Young Ones, Brass Eye, The Office – tend to be exceptionally short-running. Compared to the Americans, our…
The Guardian ·
More than 30 years after Raymond Briggs’ story became a stage show, director Will Tuckett and Paddington designer Tahra Zafar have refreshed it and added a hunky Saint Nick “Top of the show!” says Will Tuckett. On the grand piano, musical director Andy Massey strikes up an arpeggio that could melt the most frozen of hearts: “We’re walking in the air …” It is The Snowman, of course. Raymond Briggs’ 1978 picture…
The Guardian ·
The Yorkshire-born author says that the 1,000 word competition is for people ‘just living their lives being quietly hilarious’ Bridget Jones author Helen Fielding has launched a comedy writing prize in the name of her most famous creation, aimed at unearthing funny new voices from the north of England. The Bridget Jones prize for northern comedy writing will go to the funniest self-contained, first-person prose…
The Guardian ·
The winner will receive £10m and each shortlisted city will be given £125,000 Blackpool, Sheffield, Milton Keynes and Wrexham have been shortlisted to be the UK city of culture 2029, an award viewed as a way to boost local economies, foster civic pride and, above all, have some fun. The four places were chosen from a longlist of nine. The title will be announced in the new year and the three runners-up will each…
The Guardian ·
‘She carried the dead calf for hours even though it wasn’t hers. She had had a miscarriage two years before – and now picked up the stillborn babies of other mothers’ My love of African animals, in particular elephants, dates back to when I was three or four years old, growing up in Milan in a house full of old nature books. When I was six, my parents took me on my first safari in Kenya – I cried on the plane…
The Guardian ·
Translated into English at last, this portrait of a man appalled by modernity and desperate to get back to nature is brimming with Nordic weltschmerz T-O-M. The initials of Tomas Olsen Myrbråten, the narrator in Thure Erik Lund’s The Mystery of What Befell in the Ditch, spell out the Norwegian word for “empty”. Approaching 38, he’s already a relic. He spends his days slumped at the kitchen table or staring out of…
The Guardian ·
She got to torment Don Draper in Mad Men and has just won an Emmy for DTF St Louis. But nothing prepared the star for all the gore as she switched to horror with the Friday the 13th prequel ‘The first time I had the tooth in my hand,” says Linda Cardellini, “I thought, ‘Oh my God, this is what I’m doing.’” The star of Freaks and Geeks, ER, Dead to Me, Mad Men and DTF St Louis (for which she recently won an Emmy)…
The Guardian ·
A biographer’s affecting account of prominent critics of Zionism, from Hannah Arendt to Nan Goldin “Everyone in America – at least as far as I knew – was a Zionist,” recalls Benjamin Moser, “especially but not only if you were Jewish.” A Pulitzer-winning biographer of Susan Sontag, he remembers being brought up short in his 20s, when a friend described Israel as “a bunch of foreigners who had no business in the…
The Guardian ·
