Eurofile

PETER TRUDGILL explains the processes by which phrases can contract to just a shadow of their former selves. It is often the fate of words and phrases, over the millennia, to get shorter and shorter. The Latin phrase hoc die, ‘this day’, famously became so shortened in French – as hui, ‘today’ – that French […]

JASON SOLOMONS on a new film about the remarkable life of Bert Trautmann, the former German paratrooper who became a British hero. Trautmann, Bernhard. Picture: Schirner/ullstein bild via Getty Images – Credit: ullstein bild via Getty Images If you’ve heard of Bert Trautmann, it’s perhaps more as the answer to a football trivia question than […]

Dorothea Tanning was a rare female protagonist of surrealism and bridged many art disciplines and movements. A new exhibition pays due tribute to this pioneer, says CLAUDIA PRITCHARD. One door opens and another door opens in both the life and the art of Dorothea Tanning. A surrealist painter and sculptor, designer and writer, in her […]

JASON SOLOMONS on a new book which captures – and cherishes – the idiosyncrasies and occasional flaws of the capital. London is the best city in the world. As soon as you surrender to this indisputable fact, then you can set sail on the tide of emotion and information that swells through a new book, […]

Britain – as ever – focused on the twin fascinations of sex and scandal. And did so with a glorious abundance of fun and frivolity. SOPHIA DEBOICK reports Actress, dancer and singer Lottie Collins (1866 – 1910) curtseying. She is famous for the song ‘Ta Ra Ra Boom De Ay!’ Photo by London Stereoscopic Company/Getty […]

In this week’s stage review, TIM WALKER, reviews The Twilight Zone at the Ambassadors Theatre. There’s a scene in The Twilight Zone that speaks very much to our disorientating times. A man who has installed a bomb-proof shelter beneath his home is retreating into it with his family ahead of a nuclear war. His neighbours […]

The rising popularity of translated fiction shows we remain a country keen to look and learn beyond our shores, says Charlie Connelly. I bring a glimmer of hope. It is just a glimmer, a small one, and perhaps one in the manner of the email I received from a cross-channel ferry company last week announcing […]

In this week’s stage review, TIM WALKER reviews Tartuffe at the National Theatre. The National Theatre offers excursions to both heaven and hell at the moment. Turn left when you enter the main building and you are on your way to the former, in a once-in-a-lifetime production of Follies. Turn right and, for just the […]

Much remains unclear about the nature of the music produced by the Romans. But, as SOPHIA DEBOICK reports, by piecing together the clues, their creativity can still be heard. After the ravages of the Great Fire of Rome, the reign of Nero, multiple civil wars and the disasters at Pompeii and Herculaneum the previous year, […]

Tim Walker review The Son, which runs until April 6 at Kiln Theatre, London. When I look back on my teenage years, I realise an awful lot of my time was spent fretting about how Peter Barkworth would cope with finding out that his wife Hannah Gordon was having an affair with Keith Barron in […]

Singers started to unbutton, and America got a taste for adultery. SOPHIA DEBOICK on a saucy year in music (Eingeschr�nkte Rechte f�r bestimmte redaktionelle Kunden in Deutschland. Limited rights for specific editorial clients in Germany.) Bleriot, Louis – Engineer, Aviator, F *01.07.1872-02.08.1936+ Betheny near Reims: Louis Bleriot during a flight, befor his accident – ca. […]

It has its diehard fans, but do we really need this punctuation mark, asks PETER TRUDGILL The English word apostrophe comes from a Greek term meaning ‘turning away’: in Modern Greek apó means ‘from’ and strophí is ‘turn’. As used in English, apostrophe refers to the usage of the punctuation mark ‘ to indicate the […]

The author of Das Boot would have hated the new TV adaptation – but he hated most things. CHARLIE CONNELLY on the troubled mind which could never escape the terror of war beneath the waves. Lizzy Caplan as Carla Monroe in Das Boot, 2018. PHOTO: IMDB – Credit: Archant One morning in the spring of […]

Anna Akhmatova, June 11, 1889 – March 5, 1966 In 1965, the Randolph Hotel, Oxford, was about as far from Leningrad as one could imagine. With its gothic arches and windows in the fabled city of dreaming spires, cycling dons and freewheeling debates, the Soviet Union must have seemed as if it was on another […]

Follies, National Theatre, until April 6 When the National Theatre gets a production absolutely right – and let me say immediately that’s what it’s achieved with its revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Follies – it lifts you in a way that no other venue in the world can quite manage. I have seen a few productions […]

Ahead of tonight’s star-studded ceremony, critic Jason Solomons watches the remarkable Oscar-nominated film looking back on a long-forgotten episode in American history. The group’s leader, Fritz Julius Kuhn, addressed the 20,000 people in attendance. Picture: Getty Images – Credit: Bettmann Archive In February 1939, the month that German Jews were forced to turn over any […]

David Suchet delivers great value as the eccentric Gregory Solomon, alongside Brendan Coyle. Wyndham’s Theatre, until April 27 There is a world-weariness to Arthur Miller’s plays that doesn’t normally start to have much resonance with theatregoers until they reach middle age. It’s one of the few advantages of the peculiarly bleak times in which we […]

A prisoner of the Internet It’s not enough for youngsters these days to live their lives, but they have also to be seen to be living their lives on social media. On Instagram, in particular, appearance often matters a lot more than reality and that is what Sasha gets only too well. She posts some […]

The year when music came with a sense of optimism, Orientalism – and often surrealism – as pharaohs and fruit provided the inspiration. NEW YORK – CIRCA 1925: Blues singer Bessie Smith poses for a portrait circa 1925 in New York City, New York. (Photo by Edward Elcha/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images) – Credit: Archant America […]

The Olympic year represented a high point for a self-confident and outward-looking United Kingdom, says Sophia Deboick. Psy performs at the Washington DC Jingle Ball concert at the Patriot Center in Fairfax, Virginia in 2012. Picture: ABACA/Press Association Images – Credit: ABACA/Press Association Images Britain felt like a truly hopeful place in 2012. We were […]

PETER TRUDGILL on what lies behind our irregular everyday phrases. The most usual way to make past-tense verb forms in English is to add -ed to the basic form of the verb: want–wanted, love–loved; play–played. So why is the past tense of go not goed but went? Even with verbs which are irregular and do […]

The new play starring Cate Blanchett is as torturous as its name is long, writes TIM WALKER. One of the reasons I love going to the theatre more than ever is that in this age when virtually every aspect of our lives involves staring at a computer screen, 
it is about the only time, outside […]

Loathed by Picasso, praised by Matisse, Pierre Bonnard is an artist who split opinion, writes Claudia Pritchard. A major new exhibition of his work shows how he still does. Nude in the Bath c. 1936-8, by Pierre Bonnard Picture: Tate – Credit: Archant ‘Don’t talk to me about Bonnard,’ protested Picasso around the time of […]

As the Second World War took shape, a big band leader dominated the year. While, from very different quarters, a Disney film and an emerging folk star signalled sounds of the future.SOPHIA DEBOICK reports. The year began with a sense of foreboding. Four months on from the Nazi invasion of Poland, Britain faced the start […]

TIM WALKER’s stage review of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s show Aspects of Love. Two weeks before Aspects of Love first opened in the West End, Roger Moore dramatically withdrew from the cast, saying that he couldn’t cope with the technical demands of the singing. Three decades on, when I got to see Andrew Lloyd Webber’s show […]

Why does the death of a footballer produce such a particular and profound sense of pathos? asks CHARLIE CONNELLY When the aircraft intending to carry 28-year-old Argentinean footballer Emiliano Sala from Nantes to Cardiff disappeared over the English Channel north of Alderney, shock and bewilderment spread throughout the football world. In Nantes, the Breton city […]

TIM WALKER’s stage review of Approaching Empty. The Kiln Theatre in north London has once again made good on its stated mission to encourage artists of all ages and backgrounds with its latest production, Approaching Empty. It is by Ishy Din, a former cab driver of Kashmiri origin, whose family made their home in Middlesbrough. […]

As the Romani brought a gypsy beat from the east, Europe’s greatest musical innovator, Hildegard of Bingen, found a sound that could examine the human condition, as much as praise God. SOPHIA DEBOICK reports. Not even a century on from the Norman conquest, 1150 found England in the grip of political crisis. Henry I had […]

As a hit new documentary provides Bros with an unlikely comeback, SOPHIA DEBOICK looks back to the eccentric twins’ first embrace 
of fame Tiffany, wearing a black hat and her hand placed on her cheek. (Photo by Lynn Goldsmith/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images) – Credit: Corbis/VCG via Getty Images For Britain, 1988 was a manic year. […]

This week marks the 80th anniversary of the mysterious death of the sublimely-talented footballer Matthias Sindelar. CHARLIE CONNELLY revisits the tragic story of a true Austrian hero National hero: Matthias Sindelar’s image was used to market watches, milk and yogurt. Photo submitted – Credit: Archant Vienna has always had a strong fascination with death. In […]

PETER TRUDGILL on how some unlikely connections between European languages emerged after 2,000 years The Albanian word for king is mbret. You might think that this has got nothing to do with any word in any language that you have ever come across before. But it would be slightly surprising if you were right. Albanian […]

TIM WALKER on the play that Jeremy Corbyn should watch. Si�n Brooke and Alex Hassell in I’m Not Running at the National Theatre by David Hare. Photo by Mark Douet – Credit: Photo by Mark Douet There can be few, if any, audiences traditionally so predisposed to voting Labour than the National Theatre’s. The playwright […]