You have previously asserted that Maxinquaye was ruined by its success and turned into a “coffee-table album”. Having revisited the album for its upcoming deluxe reissue, what are your feelings about it now? VerulamiumParkRanger I can understand why

Any conversation about what reflects the best of world literature necessarily becomes a referendum on what literature can and should do. As chair of judges for this year’s Booker prize, I think it’s safe to say the conversations between my fellow jud

When Dawn Porter studied law at Georgetown University in Washington, she would pass the US supreme court every day. “You walk by the marble columns, the frontage which has inspirational words, and you believe that,” she recalls. “You think because of

New guidelines designed for libraries in the UK urge staff to provide materials that “illuminate” different views on controversial topics. The 52-page document, released by the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (Cilip), sta

This time last fall, a robust, in-person film festival season showed an industry in advanced recovery, Covid not all the way gone but not having anywhere near the same devastating impact as before. Big names, big films and big crowds were all back en

A body convulses on a table, with broken bones poking from a stump of torn flesh below the knee, one arm gruesomely peppered with gunshot wounds, as men in military uniforms look on approvingly. “He bleeds, he moves, he breathes, he has a pulse,” say

Like several million other video game players, I spent many hours last week travelling the galaxy in Starfield, the latest adventure from Bethesda, the creator of Fallout and the Elder Scrolls. But as with a number of my colleagues in the games press

In the early hours of 13 March 1973, the artist Hélio Oiticica was at his downtown New York loft, high on cocaine, with his friend, the film-maker and fellow Brazilian Neville D’Almeida. He reached for the nearest thing at hand on which to cut anothe

‘I was told that British audiences don’t really like experimental work, like they do in Germany or Switzerland,” says American choreographer Andrea Miller. “Which makes me really nervous. I’m more on the expressionist weirdo side.” Miller, 41, is mak

To bet against Christopher Nolan is to bet against the house – which is to lose like a fool – and yet he still came into summer movie season looking like something of an underdog. In the great Barbenheimer clash of 23, Mattel’s smiley plastic playthi

In the spring of 2019, I sometimes found myself transfixed by the corner of Canal and Lafayette streets in Soho, either marveling at a line of people or in it. This was the New York headquarters of Glossier, the makeup brand of the millennial pink ze

When someone mentions the year 1990, you might think of the last days of Margaret Thatcher, The Satanic Verses, poll tax, recession and the IRA. Or, you just might think of a man in the north-east of England getting arrested for masturbating a dolphi

To Toussaint Louverture Toussaint, the most unhappy Man of Men! Whether the rural Milk-maid by her cow Sing in thy hearing, or thy head be now Pillowed in some deep dungeon’s earless den;-- O miserable Chieftain! where and when Wilt thou find pa

During the 2000s Russell Brand was ubiquitous in the British media, adopting a scattergun approach that saw him host his own BBC Radio 2 show, present Big Brother spinoff shows, work the chatshow circuit, tour his live comedy act, present documentari

The allegations against Russell Brand that surfaced at the weekend and which he has denied – that he is a rapist, a groomer, possessed of a nihilistic sense of impunity – appear concrete and specific, and could terminate in criminal proceedings. In t

More than 500 years ago, Andrea Mantegna, court artist to the Gonzaga family who ruled the north Italian city state Mantua, painted his dream of ancient Rome. In nine large, crammed canvases, he depicted scenes from a Roman victory pageant, or triump

There’s a strange kind of pride that many people take in not being frightened by certain celebrated horror films. “Oh, it’s not scary at all,” they’ll say loftily about The Shining or The Exorcist or The Babadook, as if they’ve somehow outsmarted the

For a year Sasha Denisova didn’t tell her mother, Olga, who lives in Ukraine, that she had written a play about her. When director Yury Urnov made plans to stage it in the US, Denisova vowed to herself every month: “I need to tell my mama. I need to

Broadcasters have launched urgent investigations into the historical conduct of Russell Brand while the Metropolitan police has appealed for any potential victims to come forward after the comedian was accused of rape, sexual assault and emotional ab

On a trip to Norfolk back in 2009, artist and academic Matthew Cornford decided to take a nostalgic look at his old art school. Great Yarmouth College of Art and Design may not have been an elite establishment – one of its best known alumni is Keith

I met Kevin Rowland for lunch on the day before his 70th birthday. The Dexys frontman had tried hard to ignore the previous 20 or so milestones, he says, hoping they’d go away, but he had plans for a celebration this time around. There are plenty of

Madhur Jaffrey is the accidental cook. “I have always been suspicious of my cookery career,” she says, “in the sense that I feel it’s not my real career. I can cook but I’m an actress.” Indeed she is. Famed for winning the best actress award at the 1

My mum was a single parent raising three kids. Because of that, we had to learn our way around the kitchen quite quickly. I don’t know if that created a love of food – my mum’s an amazing cook, so that probably helped, too. I just love the puzzle of

Maureen Freely, 71, was born in New Jersey and grew up in Istanbul. Her new book, My Blue Peninsula – the fourth in a loose series of novels set in the Turkish city – is narrated by a woman trying to understand her family’s role in the Armenian genoc

There’s a theatre in the village of Majdal Shams. It’s just a short walk from the family home Ebla Mari grew up in. It’s where she learned piano, and saw her first live theatre, too. In 2014, it was on its stage, racked with blinding stage-fright, th

Poppies, hollyhocks and the lesser known moon carrot are spreading their way across rugs, fabrics and furniture this autumn as a national obsession with rewilding plays out in living rooms, bedrooms and kitchens across Britain. Cottagecore – a loose

It is December 2015. I am the minister for flooding. (I am also the minister for forestry, for national parks, for nature, for chemicals, for air quality, for waste and recycling, for water and much more than can be written on a business card). I kne

When the war comic was at the height of its popularity, titles included Battle, Warlord, Valiant, the Hotspur and the pocket-sized Commando, which is still published today. Many of the stories published in the 1950s and 1960s relayed the gung-ho hero

His life of service through scholarship earned him the title “venerable”. He is considered one of the most influential thinkers of the post-Roman world, and acknowledged as a saint in the Orthodox, Catholic and Anglican traditions. Now a leading acad

On the corner of Foster Street, Sydney – between the boutique hotels, “contemporary office spaces” in converted warehouses, the assisted living facility and the fancy cocktail bars – sits the Hotel Hollywood. “Everyone has a story about the Hollywood