Eurofile

We are entering asparagus season. I love it, earthy and nutty as it is

How an unstarry, violent story of crime and redemption with echoes of the classic policiers cleaned up at France’s Oscars

Painstakingly plotted, the Swedish author’s bestselling debut Collected Works weighs in at 733 pages – over a quarter of a million words

A new show at the National Gallery maps startling changes in pre-first world war European art

The Brexit architect follows in a long line of stage heroes who are morally questionable or downright loathsome

Noel Coward's play is funny now in a way that is tragic

Thirty years on, the key to the enduring legacy of Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Three Colours trilogy is creativity and love

Even the greatest of writers – from John Steinbeck to Maya Angelou – suffer from the idea that they’re about to be found out

The genius of a mysterious and overlooked painter is revealed at a new exhibition in The Hague

The Breton language of northern France does not derive from Gaulish – it has its roots in migration from Devon and Cornwall

This recipe from the chef of Quality Wines uses the finest charcuterie from rare-breed pigs in the Bologna Apennines

John Huston and Jean-Paul Sartre came together to create a film based on the life of Sigmund Freud, but the project was scuppered by irreconcilable creative differences

The satirical concept of immortal but increasingly senile people in Gulliver’s Travels highlights the societal impact of an ageing population

Morris dancing, folk music and other English traditions are making a comeback. And the new followers are a diverse bunch

Fifty years after his death, the artist’s misogyny is the most pressing aspect of his legacy

It is apparent that Picasso’s name comes to the lips of singers with the same ease as “Jesus” or “Elvis”

The great European author, who died earlier this month, didn’t leave Croatia – her country left her

How Frederick Forsyth’s bestselling thriller became the last word in political assassination cinema

This dish from the executive chef of Legare in London combines perfectly made risotto with a generous helping of mussels

The humble life of St Francis of Assisi continues to inspire valuable paintings, showcased in an upcoming exhibition at the National Gallery

Christianity may have driven out the old religion, but old English speakers still kept part of its language intact

The German-born artist created his melancholy and nightmarish Europe After the Rain II during the most frightening and uncertain period of his own life

In the literary snake pit, writers and critics tend to either suck up to one another frantically, or bite down hard so as to inject their venom yet deeper

This musical is a joyous explosion of colour, light and good humour

There’s almost certainly a great play to be written about gay black and mixed-race men but this sadly isn’t it

How Brigitte Reimann, once an idealistic socialist, wrote one of Germany’s great post-war novels

Unsung Inglourious Basterds actor Denis Ménochet encounters more terror in the countryside in Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s The Beasts

The diminutive Italian actress, star of La Strada and Nights of Cabiria, was more than a match for her husband, director Federico Fellini, on and off set

We labelled her an ‘enemy alien’ but the Austrian-born studio potter’s work helped reinvent a drab postwar Britain

The late Israeli actor and singer performed If I Were a Rich Man more than 3,500 times in multiple productions of Fiddler on the Roof

The Beheading of St John the Baptist in Valletta’s St John’s Co-Cathedral became the inspiration for Samuel Beckett’s dramatic monologue Not I

Most modern European languages are thought to have originally come from one area of the vast Eurasian Steppe