Category : Culture

Strictly Come Dancing 2019: week three – as it happened

It’s movie week! But who had enough razzle-dazzle not to end up on the cutting room floor? We followed every bit of the action 9.19pm BST Thanks everyone for joining in – I’m off to lie down in a darkened room to read your comments – please come and...

Marcelino Sambé: ‘Ballet should not be just for elite kids’

It’s a fairytale: the young dancer in a poor Lisbon suburb who makes it to principal at a world class company. But more underprivileged children should get a chance, says the Royal Ballet’s rising star“My earliest memory of dancing,” Marcelino Sambé...

Judy review – Zellweger and Garland coexist symbiotically

Renée Zellweger is phenomenally good in this captivating account of Judy Garland’s final London concert run“I’m only Judy Garland for one hour a night. The rest of the time, I am part of a family.” The rebuke is drawled during an interview on British...

Clive James: ‘The most overrated books almost all emerged from a single genre – magic realism’

The author, critic and poet on reading Biggles as a child and his admiration for Philip LarkinThe book I am currently readingMostly at this stage I am rereading myself, and finding something marvellous on every page. I’ve just received the advance co...

One to watch: Tony Njoku

The rising British-Nigerian R&B artist has a gift for combining an array of musical perspectives into a unified wholeThe glass-walled, high-rise walkway of Your Rainbow Panorama, Olafur Eliasson’s installation in Aarhus, Denmark, is an otherworld...

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: Ghosteen review – a heavenly haunting

(Ghosteen Ltd)In the first album wholly written since the death of his son, Cave reaches an extraordinary, sad and beautiful artistic evolutionWhat is the worst that can happen? And what happens after the worst does? Nick Cave, leader of the Bad Seed...

Kara Walker: Fons Americanus review – monumental rebuke to the evils of empire

Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, LondonThe American’s bold subversion of exultant Victorian kitsch charms even as it cuts to the quick of slavery and refuge deniedThe American artist Kara Walker brings a bold, poetic energy to the clunky art-garage of the...

‘I go nowhere, I see no one’: Garbo letters reveal lonely life of film icon

The star told her closest friend of her isolation in a series of notes that are now up for auctionGreta Garbo, the elusive Hollywood actress of the 1930s, was so inscrutable she was known as the Swedish Sphinx.Born in Stockholm, she is best remembere...

The week in classical: Unclassified Live; Orpheus and Eurydice; Isata Kanneh-Mason – review

Queen Elizabeth Hall; Coliseum; Kings Place, LondonRadio 3’s late-night show took to the stage in a vibrant, mind-expanding evening, while Wayne McGregor’s ENO debut is all about the danceTaking a walk around a Derby retail park at 4am seems an unlik...

Burning down the house: the bittersweet appeal of break-up literature

From Richard Yates and Maggie Nelson to Ocean Vuong and Alice Munro, many of the great love stories are really about its aftermath. What can we learn from the literature of heartbreak?When I was 22, I tried to write a story about a breakup. I’d just...

Tyler, the Creator: ‘Theresa May’s gone, so I’m back in the UK’

Four years after being turned away at the airport, the rapper talks about his battle with the Home Office, his funk reinvention – and why accusations of homophobia were wide of the markIt is a Tuesday afternoon in mid-September and Tyler, the Creator...

How to write a Booker contender – by Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie and others

Where do Booker-prize authors find their inspiration? The authors on the 2019 shortlist reveal the secrets behind their novelsIn The Handmaid’s Tale, we left Offred here: “The van waits in the driveway, its double doors stand open. The two of them, o...

Streaming: where to find Judy Garland films online

Renée Zellweger may excel as the Hollywood icon, but Garland’s own electric screen presence, in classics and curios alike, remains a thing of wonderIs every October at the cinema going to turn up a new reason to reflect on the genius of Judy Garland?...

Haim: ‘We can go toe-to-toe with any male rock band and blow them out of water'

The LA trio have faced grief, sexism and members of Portishead - now they’re back with a new darker soundA tip if you are ever visiting Los Angeles: don’t be suckered in by those open-top bus tours of celebrity homes, where some wannabe actor in a he...

Immersive Wolf of Wall Street opening delayed again due to flooding

Producers extend preview run indefinitely due to building setbacks and a script ‘in flux’An immersive theatre adaptation of The Wolf of Wall Street has postponed its opening night and extended its preview run due to production “setbacks”, after its c...