Eurofile

A sterile-sounding genre is revived by an injection of illicit creativity. SOPHIA DEBOICK on the musicians who put the soul into rural America’s music At the mid-point of the 1970s rock was in its pomp. The Who set a record for the biggest indoor concert (78,000 at Pontiac, Michigan in December). Led Zeppelin sold out […]

What makes some men act inappropriately? Psychiatry professor PHILIP GRAHAM explores the science behind harassment It is a scandal which started in Hollywood and has spread around the globe, as sexual harassment allegations are made against more individuals, and concerning more institutions. The full repercussions are yet to be fully understood, but this troubling issue […]

In his most celebrated poems, Rupert Brooke gave a classic evocation of England. But, argues CHARLIE CONNELLY, his work has a very European context My copy of Rupert Brooke’s 1914 And Other Poems is a third impression of the first edition that was published in June 1915. The first run had only appeared the previous […]

Facing upheaval in Europe, modern art found a very special refuge in New York. So, says CLAUDIA PRITCHARD, a new blockbuster MoMA exhibition in Paris represents something of a homecoming When the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York was founded in 1929, it had no museum building, and precious little art. But it […]

Britain has never produced another hero like Dan Dare. In a landmark year for the lantern-jawed pilot, CHARLIE CONNELLY pays tribute to a figure who has shaped our art, literature, science, architecture and even musical theatre 2017 is a big year for Dan Dare. Born in 1967, he turns 50 while also marking 50 years […]

Painting Chaucer as a Little Englander, as many have done, does him a disservice. It is time to reclaim the great man from the Brexit tendency, says CHARLIE CONNELLY​ Every year on October 25, the anniversary of Chaucer’s death, I heave my copy of The Riverside Chaucer from the shelves, haul it to the sofa […]

SOPHIA DEBOICK on a year in which the last lingering cobwebs of Victorianism were blown away by a new sound. Before the First World War announced the 20th century as an era in which humanity would pervert technology and ideals of gallantry into lethal forces, its earliest years were marked by legendary feats of human […]

Despite plenty of opportunities being created, when it comes to European sports books, writers are just not putting their chances away, says CHARLIE CONNELLY. If you were to name one book that pricked your interest in Europe, what would it be? Grimms’ Fairy Tales? Pinocchio? the Chalet School books? If I tell you mine, promise […]

Our culture correspondent Viv Groskop charts the many chapters in the career of a man described as the ‘most exciting new theatre writer of our time’. Florian Zeller is one of those people who, once you find out about them, you feel as if you should already have known who they were a very long […]

The world’s most successful show this year – beating the likes of Bruce Springsteen and Justin Bieber – is a Swiss figure skating performance. Could the British warm to it, asks WAYNE SAVAGE? The UK’s mild weather is perhaps to explain for our uneasy relationship with ice. Despite an intense, if short-lived, fascination with Torvill […]

Akvavit has been a Scandinavian favourite for centuries. The spirit’s name is derived from the Latin aqua vitae, or ‘water of life’ (as indeed is the word ‘whisky’, which comes via the Gaelic equivalent of the phrase). Like vodka, it is distilled from either grain or potatoes and is then flavoured with herbs, spices or […]

There is more to Alberto Giacometti than his reputation as a troubled maverick, says JOANNE CRAWFORD. The life and art of Alberto Giacometti have received plenty of attention in 2017. A major exhibition of his work was held at Tate Modern in London, and then came the release of Stanley Tucci’s biopic, Final Portrait, a […]

Plenty of books create beautiful evocations of the cities in which they are set. But far fewer succeed in elevating their locations from a backdrop into a central character. CHARLIE CONNELLY selects a few. On learning of the death of J.P. Donleavy on September 11 at the age of 91 I eschewed the most appropriate […]

By attempting to quash the result before it was even known, Madrid has made the case for Catalan independence all but unanswerable. As I believe I’ve mentioned a few times in columns past, I spent the academic year 1990 to 1991 living in Spain; I was working as an English language assistant in a high […]

There’s something rather familiar about 1981. America had a new president better known for showbiz than politics, the Labour party was being led by a scruffy leftist, a new age of nuclear paranoia was dawning and a devastating London fire became the focus for protest at social and racial inequality. The pop scene that year […]

PETER TRUDGILL traces the clockwork progress of the word ‘orange’ from southern India to northern Europe, and finds the odd detour. The Democratic Unionist Party are having difficulty coming to terms with the official use in Ulster of Irish Gaelic, the indigenous Celtic language of Ireland. They also have a predilection for the colour orange. […]

Ahead of the return to London of arguably his greatest work, Glengarry Glen Ross, Charlie Connelly considers the craft of polymath and playwright David Mamet. Al Pacino on the set of Glengarry Glen Ross. Photo: New Line Cinema/Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images – Credit: Corbis via Getty Images In the mid-1960s Carol Stoll would sit […]

BONNIE GREER on the performers who can reinvent themselves for an overseas audience. In ITV’s latest hit period-soap Victoria, the French actor Bruno Wolkowitch plays the role of the wily and lecherous French king Louis Philippe. From about 1997-2006, Wolkowitch was French television’s version of Al Pacino, a brooding, intense, and sexy presence in a […]

Now the hype is over, what can we expect next from the king of hygge? As our culture correspondent Viv Groskop reports, it’s time to like lykke. Unless you have been living under a rock (and perhaps, in view of Brexit, that is not such a bad place to be), you will have noticed the […]

A new report from campaigning group Women in Journalism shines a light on the sexism of Fleet Street, says its authors Eleanor Mills, Katie Hind and Áine Quinn. The media is the mirror that society holds up to itself. It is through newspapers – whether in print or on screen – that the first draft […]

Peter Trudgill on a remarkable discovery which transformed the way we think about languages. About 230 years ago, Sir William Jones made an amazing intellectual breakthrough. Jones had been born in London of a Welsh father and an English mother, and some reports suggest that he grew up bilingual in Welsh and English, though this […]

How the ‘Flying Finn’ dominated distance running during the 1920s through sheer dogged determination more than natural talent. It’s often the case with the world’s best words that there’s no direct English translation, something certainly true of the Finnish sisu. Indeed, for a concept that lies at the very core of Finnish character and identity […]

The Danish island of Fanø was bypassed by the conflicts of the 20th century, yet remains marked forever by them. JAMES RODGERS visits and finds a European backwater with a lesson for Brexiteers The lone white headstone stands out. Nearby, in the tiny cemetery, lie farmers and fishermen who worked the land, faced the North […]

Fans of the cult Spanish series I Know Who You Are have been left in frustration. As they await the climax, LARA WILLIAMS explores what is behind the show’s success I Know Who You Are, or Sé Quién Eres, is a taut Spanish crime thriller which has gained a cult following since its recent appearance […]

BONNIE GREER on the late Sir Peter Hall, a man who revolutionised English-speaking theatre Peter Hall called his memoir Making An Exhibition Of Myself, a phrase his mother would hurl at him from time to time. An only child, and the grandson of Queen Victoria’s ratcatcher, he was born in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, a […]

Between them, Juan Carlos Copes and María Nieves rescued a South American art form from an ignominious death – dancing first with love, then with hate – says CHRIS SULLIVAN. A new documentary tells the tortured story of the dance’s greatest-ever partnership In the early years of the last century, tango – without doubt, the […]

Europe may not have a unifying musical or literary canon but there is more to cultural identity than good books and fine art, according to human rights lawyer CONOR GEARTY A community without a shared culture is inevitably on a journey to oblivion, Theresa May’s citizens of nowhere heading for the cliff edge. So what […]

ADRIAN BURNHAM visits the Norwegian city of Stavanger, home of one of the world’s greatest street art festivals, where even the surrounding fjords become a gallery I need to get my eyes tested. I thought I’d just seen Igor Ponosov’s work Too Far, Too Close (2017) at the brilliant Rise Up! Exhibition. I was chuckling […]

STEVE ANGLESEY explains the surge of protest in America’s biggest professional sports league The sensation of being stranded in darkness while facing insurmountable odds is nothing new for Colin Kaepernick. In February 2013, his San Francisco team were trailing by 22 points in the Super Bowl when the lights went off in the New Orleans […]

Jack Kerouac’s drug-fuelled stream of consciousness is 60 years old this month. And while the Beat Generation might now seem like fifties throwbacks, this most celebrated novel could just be the most influential book of the twentieth century, says CHRIS SULLIVAN ‘I read On the Road in maybe 1959,’ wrote quintessential Beatnik Bob Dylan. ‘It […]

Between them, Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe provided one of sport’s greatest ever rivalries. But, as JASON SOLOMONS reports, a new film centred around their most famous clash is really all about unravelling the Swedish enigma Tennis was never the same after the fourth set of the 1980 Wimbledon final. Upstart, foul-mouthed American John McEnroe […]

Britain’s entry into Europe was a long, painful process – with clear lessons for our even more painful departure, says EDWARD BICKHAM, curator of a new exhibition on this pivotal period in British history During the late 1940s, Winston Churchill had been the darling of many European political salons as a result of making trenchant […]