Eurofile

PETER TRUDGILL on the archipelago which helped develop the language now spoken in Greece. Great Britain started decolonising its imperial possessions in a significant way in 1947, when British India became the two independent states of India and Pakistan. But there is a very interesting example of British decolonisation which comes from well before that […]

SOPHIA DEBOICK on the sounds of the Scottish capital Princess Street Garden and Edinburgh Castle, Edinburgh, Scotland When: 16 Jul 2015 – Credit: Archant In the 17th century, Scotland rediscovered itself, and Edinburgh was the centre of that rediscovery. The 1739 publication of A Treatise of Human Nature, by the city’s own David Hume heralded […]

TIM WALKER reviews a performance of the Three Sisters at the National Theatre. Quite possibly in response to the vacuity of the times in which we live, the National Theatre seems to have adopted a policy of staging very long, cerebral and earnest productions. Inua Ellams’ adaptation of Chekov’s Three Sisters – running to three […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY profiles the great Dane Victor Borge. During the last year of the 20th century Victor Borge played 60 concerts. He was 90 years old. His material, a mixture of deft musical sketches and parodies interspersed with drily humorous quips and monologues, hadn’t changed much since he first began performing it in his native […]

A dilution of Dickens, TIM WALKER reviews a stage production of A Christmas Carol. There’s a peculiar intimacy to A Christmas Carol. It’s Charles Dickens holding his readers by the scruff of the neck, saying he knows about the weaknesses of each and every one of them, and warning that if they don’t mend their […]

Never mind the musicians the capital has produced, SOPHIA DEBOICK concentrates on the songs it has inspired. While London has been an international musical hub since the days of Handel, the legendary albums made and visionaries born there countless, it is as a songwriting subject that the city has been most intriguing. London’s landmarks have […]

CLAUDIA PRITCHARD on a new exhibition seeking to revive the reputation of Jessica Dismorr and others eclipsed both by their male counterparts and global events. The electricity was off because the bill was unpaid, the friends sat on crates scavenged from the nearby fruit and veg market in old Covent Garden, but when the first […]

In English, the word can be frustratingly imprecise. As PETER TRUDGILL reports, other languages have gone to greater lengths to ensure exactitude. A few years ago, the Greek translator of a book I had written got in touch to ask if a “cousin” I had referred to in the text was a man or a […]

Phil Spector was responsible for one of the greatest Christmas records ever made. SOPHIA DEBOICK tells the story and asks if we must reassess it in the light of his later murder conviction. He was the one producer deserving of the overused term ‘genius’, but Phil Spector will spend Christmas – and his 80th birthday […]

CLAUDIA PRITCHARD on the new exhibition showcasing the influence of two Roman artists who pioneered the exuberance and ebullience of the ornate style. A portrait of the Italian painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. Picture: Biblioteca Marucelliana – Credit: Archant The goddess Medusa had a look so poisonous it turned men to stone. But she met […]

charlie connelly attempts to buck the current trend for cultural stalemates, by picking the best.. and worst of 2019’s literary offerings. The Capital by Robert Menasse. Picture: MacLehose – Credit: Archant As politics grows ever more cutthroat, with grandmothers climbed over, ambition getting ever more naked and politicians competing with each other to tell the […]

Max Sebald was a writer who never experienced the horrors of the 20th century but in his writings he could never escape them. CHARLIE CONNELLY reports on his life. Author and academic professor WG ‘Max’ Sebald, 57, who was killed after his car was involved in a head-on collision with a lorry in December 2001. […]

Jamaica’s capital not only gave the world one of its greatest music stars, it produced a sound that has taken root around the globe. SOPHIA DEBOICK reports Kingston teenagers Althea and Donna had a No.1 with Uptown Top Ranking in 1977. Picture: Fin Costello/Redfems – Credit: Archant Since the middle of the last century, music […]

PETER TRUDGILL on the languages of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – and how they interact. The Baltic States are, from north to south along the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. We often refer to them by this collective name as if they formed some kind of unity – and in […]

The Russian city has not only produced brilliant music, but – amid horrors of war – one of history’s greatest performances. Saint Petersburg is a city of beauty and brutality. Peter the Great founded his grand capital in 1703 as a Baltic port city that “hack[ed] a window through to Europe”. But while it took […]

The big budget spectacular is lavish and extravagant – but is failed by its lack of heart. Shaftesbury Theatre, London, until May 30 Even down to the trendy ampersand in the title, & Juliet appears to have been created not by lyricists and composers, but advertising men and focus groups. It’s great of course that […]

Duke of York’s Theatre, London, until February 29. On a local newspaper, I once reported on a Townswomen’s Guild’s attempt to re-enact the Battle of Britain. I sat for nearly an hour transfixed as about a dozen old girls, with papier-mâché wings attached to their shoulders, threw themselves into the ambitious project with manic intensity. […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY on the life and tragic fate of Etty Hillesum, who turned down opportunities to go into hiding before her murder at Auschwitz. On a hot day in early September 1943 a train moved slowly across the flat Dutch countryside, clanking slowly along rails that shimmered in the heat. For the thousand Jews crammed […]

PETER TRUDGILL on the origins of many of our most common surnames… and much more besides There are quite a lot of people in Great Britain, and in other English-speaking parts of the world, who have surnames ending in -kins or -kinson: Atkins, Dickinson, Jenkins, Parkinson, Simkins, Tomkinson, Watkins, Wilkinson – and plenty more. If […]

Classical music may have played a central role in Finland’s history, but so has classic rock. SOPHIA DEBOICK reports. Finland is a land of extremes. With a population of five-and-a-half million, it is the most sparsely populated country in the European Union, and it is also the EU’s most northerly country, its northernmost third lying […]

Perhaps Britain’s most important living painter, Bridget Riley’s op-art paved the way for the Swinging Sixties. Claudia Pritchard reports. The 60-year career of the artist Bridget Riley seems as clear-cut and directional as the knife-sharp edges in her eye-catching stripes, as solid and dependable as the coloured discs of her later years.
And a glorious retrospective […]

Released 40 years ago and now the subject of its own exhibition, The Clash’s London Calling simultaneously paid tribute to rock ‘n’ roll and took an iconoclast’s Hammer to it. SOPHIA DEBOICK reports. Joe Strummer of The Clash exchanges his shirt with a member of the audience during a concert. (Photo by © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS/Corbis […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY looks back on the life of Svetlana Alliluyeva. Soviet politician Lavrentiy Beria with Josef Stalin’s daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva, USSR, 1930s. Beria (1899-1953) was First Secretary of the Georgian Communist Party during the 1930s. He began working in the security apparatus in the early 1920s and went (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images) […]

TIM WALKER reviews Sydney & the Old Girl at Park Theatre, London. Miriam Margolyes has a splendidly comic face, a splendidly comic voice and a splendidly comic sense of timing. A more splendidly comic actress it’s hard to imagine. I could happily watch Margolyes reciting the entire electoral roll without becoming even remotely bored. I […]

It may lack the glitz of more renowned musical hubs, but in Stockton it’s the soul that counts says SOPHIA DEBOICK. While some places are synonymous with music industry glamour, others entirely lack mystique. Stockton-on-Tees’ claims to fame include the invention of the friction match in a chemist’s shop on its high street (the widest […]

We have borrowed plenty of words from Greek – but they haven’t always kept quite the same meaning, says PETER TRUDGILL If you are on holiday in Greece or Cyprus, you may be unlucky enough to come across a sign hanging on the door of your hotel lift saying Ektós liturgías. Ektós is not necessarily […]

CLAUDIA PRITCHARD on a new exhibition telling the story of Magnum Photos, the agency which handed photographers control. USA. Baltimore, Maryland. 1964. Martin Luther KING. Photo: ©Leonard Freed / Magnum Photos – Credit: ©Leonard Freed / Magnum Photos On the road with Martin Luther King, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the funeral train of […]

The original publication of The War of the Worlds was like a bombshell to an angst-ridden Britain suspicious of its neighbours. Now, why might the BBC consider a new adaption so timely? CHARLIE CONNELLY reports There’s never really a wrong time to revive H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds. Whenever a new adaptation comes […]

The Austrian capital’s somewhat stuffy image as the home of classical music overlooks the fact it has always been keen on celebration, says SOPHIA DEBOICK Vienna is the classical music capital of the world. The masters of the first Viennese school – Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Haydn – all lived and died there, sustained by […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY assesses the dramatic life of Vera Karalli and finds more to it than her apparent connection to one of the 20th century’s most intriguing killings The death of Grigori Rasputin, spiritual adviser to the Russian Tsar Nicholas and a particular favourite of the Tsarina Alexandra, in St Petersburg on December 30, 1916, is […]

PETER TRUDGILL revisits a traumatic day in English football history to track down some etymological roots On June 22, 1986, in a World Cup quarter-final football match played between England and Argentina in Mexico City, the Argentinian player Diego Maradona knocked the ball into the England net with his hand and claimed a goal – […]

TIM WALKER reviews the National Theatre’s latest production Ironically, the highest salary I’ve so far received in my career was when I was required to do absolutely nothing. I was working for a business start-up that no one was supposed to know about – something to do with upgrading the security technology at airports – […]