Category : Culture

On my radar: Fiona Shaw’s cultural highlights

The award-winning actor on the genius of Fritz Lang, the human cost of Homer’s Iliad and where to find the best live music in IrelandBorn in County Cork, Ireland, in 1958, Fiona Shaw studied philosophy at University College Cork before training at Ra...

Charlatan review – inside the mind of a prickly mystic

Agnieszka Holland’s austere drama about a famous Czech healer sets his internal conflict against the turbulence of eastern EuropeA local legend in the mid-20th century Czech Republic who scrutinised the urine of his clients and made diagnoses based o...

St Vincent: Daddy’s Home review – a compelling family affair

(Caroline/Loma Vista)Channelling 70s New York funk and her father’s release from prison, the ever brilliant Annie Clark loosens up on her engagingly soulful sixth albumAnnie “St Vincent” Clark may exaggerate the detail, tell oblique stories or get a...

Tennis Elbow review – a nonstop rally of jokes

Pitlochry Festival theatre, onlineJohn Byrne revisits the terrain of his 1977 hit spoof Writer’s Cramp to follow the fortunes of artist Pamela Crichton Capers in this dizzy audio dramaPell-mell, helter skelter, the joshing wordplay rains down. No cha...

Leonardo da Vinci bear drawing expected to fetch £12m at auction

Head of a Bear is to be sold in London in July by Christie’s auction houseA drawing of a bear by Leonardo da Vinci is expected to fetch up to £12m at auction.The picture, titled Head of a Bear, is being sold in London by Christie’s. It will go on dis...

Emma Donoghue on writing Room: ‘I toned down some of the horror of the Fritzl case’

Donoghue’s bestseller drew on the case of Felix Fritzl, who was held captive in a dungeon by his father, and her observations of her own childrenI got the notion to write Room in 2008 when I was driving to a book event and mulling over a news story f...

BBC Young Musician 2020 final review – a golden year

Available onlinePercussionist Fang Zhang triumphed with an exhilarating marimba rhapsody in an evening of dazzling performances by three teen virtuososWhether you attribute the mood of heightened emotion to the effects of lockdown, or to the exceptio...

Hottest front-room seats: the best theatre and dance to watch online

From live streams of new plays to classics from the archive, here are some of the top shows online now or coming soon The stage on screen: our guide to films about theatrePreviously seen at Edinburgh fringe’s Zoo Southside in 2018, this award-winning...

I’ve spent so much of my life dreaming of homes I cannot afford | Deborah Levy

In this extract from Real Estate, the final instalment of Deborah Levy’s ‘living autobiography’ series, she reflects on fantasy properties, empty nests and the relationship between property and freedomI walked to Central Park. It had suddenly become...

‘I walked out of Avengers profoundly changed’: our writers’ favourite cinema moments

Big-screen highlights, from a magnificent montage in The Royal Tenenbaums to an all-time high in Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo BayCatherine Bray on cinema’s long-awaited returnIt is so difficult to pin down a “happiest” moment in the cine...

Streaming: the best springtime movies

From the floral euphoria of Bambi to outright pastoral terror in The Wicker Man, cinema’s best spring stories are a heady bunchSpring is emphatically here, albeit in somewhat damp form of late; coinciding with the vaccine drive and an incremental lif...

The best recent science fiction and fantasy – reviews roundup

Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon; Dark Lullaby by Polly Ho-Yen; We Are Satellites by Sarah Pinsker; The Kingdoms by Natasha Pulley; and The Cottingley Cuckoo by AJ ElwoodSorrowland by Rivers Solomon (#Merky, £12.99) is an exhilarating journey to the oute...

A brief encounter with Muriel, Alan Bennett’s latest talking head

Frances de la Tour plays another of the playwright’s fascinating women in a three-minute sketch for Nottingham Playhouse’s digital seriesIf Covid-secure theatre accidentally sparked a renaissance of the dramatic monologue, Alan Bennett confirmed he w...

Coldplay’s Chris Martin says lockdowns forced him to re-evaluate fame

Frontman says Covid pandemic means he has tried ‘to not attach too much to being a pop star’Coronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageThe Coldplay frontman Chris Martin has said Covid lockdowns forced him to confront and re-evaluate...

No laughing matter: the TV prank shows that went too far

An Iraqi series has just been pulled off the air after staging fake Isis ambushes. So who thinks it’s OK to abduct people or simulate a plane crash?There are prank shows, and then there is Tannab Raslan, an Iraqi prank show so extreme that it has jus...