Highlights
Art
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha: murdered at 31 but revered for ever
The American-Asian artist’s brutal killing ended a life of huge promise – but her voice could not be silenced
The world’s wildest art gallery
Brazil’s Inhotim Institute, a vast open-air museum, is part botanical garden, part moral maze
How John Belushi resurrected the samurai
From Saturday Night Live to Star Wars, the 1970s reinvented Japan’s warrior elite – now the subject of a major exhibition – as pop mythology
Carona, the Swiss village where art hid out
A sleepy Alpine mountain retreat offered shelter for surrealists, LSD prophets and weary hippies
Mary Kelly’s countdown to catastrophe
The veteran artist’s World on Fire Timeline maps a century of crisis and resistance
There’s a 20-billion dollar haul under the sea – but whose is it?
The booty went down in a shipwreck over 300 years ago. Now comes the tricky question of ownership
Books
The books that explain why everyone wants Greenland
Trump and co like to imagine the Arctic as empty, silent and ripe for the taking. In fact it is noisy, political and increasingly angry
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha: murdered at 31 but revered for ever
The American-Asian artist’s brutal killing ended a life of huge promise – but her voice could not be silenced
To the island: in search of Janet Frame
Mysteries, misdiagnoses and miracles marked the extraordinary life of New Zealand’s greatest writer. Yet she remains oddly undercelebrated in her own land
The secret lives of Agatha Christie
The great crime writer, who died 50 years ago, may have looked in later life like Miss Marple – but in her youth she was an intrepid world traveller with a passion for surfing
Why Hamnet doesn’t get Shakespeare
Chloé Zhao’s film is deeply felt and beautifully made – but misses the essence of what made the playwright so great
The lie we tell ourselves every January
Every new year, we swear we’ll start anew – but literature shows we never really can
Music
Was David Bowie really a ‘secret Tory’? (spoiler alert: no)
A Telegraph columnist claimed, on the basis of no evidence whatsoever, that the Thin White Duke supported the Conservatives
Crate-digging in the rubble of Ukraine
As bombs fall and homes are destroyed, the country’s vinyl collectors risk everything to save the music that tells their life stories
Here comes the Taiwanese indie boom
Living so close to a huge unfriendly neighbour has made our politics intense – but it has also done the same for our music culture
GB News concocts some Hootenanny fury
The hard right channel reported on ‘fury’ about Jools Holland’s ‘woke’ annual jamboree – from a lone X account
Ten years later, David Bowie is still everywhere
Nothing has been quite the same in the decade since he made his final transformation. Except, that is, our appreciation of his genius
Argentina’s deafening new year
To survive the club culture of Buenos Aires, you need stamina and a willingness to let go of British ideas about bedtime
Film
Is 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple our future?
Nia DaCosta takes the reins in this no-holds-barred exploration of cults, superstition and what happens to humanity when reason collapses
The canonisation of David Lynch
A year after his death, the Twin Peaks director is universally loved. Would this Don of darkness really be happy about that?
Hamnet is powerful because it’s unsentimental
There is not a shred of sentimentality in Chloé Zhao’s magnificent adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel. This is where its brilliance lies
Death to the celebrity documentary
From the Beckhams to Eddie Murphy and Charlie Sheen, they promise truth but deliver reputation-laundering dressed up as intimacy
Why Hamnet doesn’t get Shakespeare
Chloé Zhao’s film is deeply felt and beautifully made – but misses the essence of what made the playwright so great
More close encounters: the must-see movies of 2026
A new Spielberg, a remake of The Bride of Frankenstein and an exploration of the Moroccan outdoor rave scene are among the films to watch out for this year
Theatre
London’s best play of the moment sees the smug get smacked
A superb revival of When We Are Married gleefully demolishes 25 years of pious respectability
The New World’s cream of arts and culture in 2025
Our writers on their cultural highlights of the year
David Copperfield is London’s best Christmas show of the year
Eddy Payne is reminiscent of Ralph Richardson in a night full of fun and charm
Bryan Cranston is superbly seditious in All My Sons
Marianne Jean-Baptiste and Paapa Essiedu make for magnificent theatre – just ignore the tree
This Othello is a tour de force
At the heart of Tom Morris’s brilliant production is Toby Jones’s astonishing performance of Iago. It is, by far, the best I’ve ever seen
The Line of Beauty is dazzling and devastating
There’s more humanity in this standout play about Thatcher’s Britain than in the decade itself
Great Lives
Ham, the chimp that launched the space age
In 1961, before the first human reached space, a chimpanzee was strapped into a rocket and sent into the unknown
Miep Gies, the ambassador for Anne Frank’s diary
She was always adamant that she had done nothing heroic; that helping other people should be considered normal, not exceptional
Ágnes Keleti, the gymnast who resembled the Spirit of Ecstasy
Very few athletes have had to endure what the Hungarian went through in order to compete for her country
George Michael, the man on a quest for identity
Feeling not quite Greek but not quite British, a young Georgios went down the route of many uncertain teenagers – he chose Top of the Pops as his guide
Dinah Washington, the Queen of the Blues
The clarity of emotion she expressed over strings and a rhythm and blues beat came as naturally to her as breathing
Sócrates, the beautiful game’s great romantic
He never lifted the World Cup, but his intelligence and fight for democracy made him one of the nation’s most beloved footballing icons