Highlights
Art
The shots and the shadows
The Netherlands’ massive new photographic museum showcases art and celebs – but it’s the images of occupation and hunger that won’t let you look away
The enduring influence of Tracey Emin
Tracey Emin: A Second Life establishes beyond doubt her significance in British artistic history
The Outsiders Arts Club
Do you secretly know very little about art? Are you interested in good stuff that doesn’t need a mortgage to buy it? Then this is the place for you
Anna Ancher’s light fantastic
The great Dane who ignored a teacher’s instructions to throw her paintbox into the sea
The man who made your furniture grin
Alessandro Mendini turned corkscrews into characters and armchairs into art. An exhibition of his work is on at the Estorick in London
Ralph Steadman and the death of fun
The Welsh illustrator is staring down the barrel of 90, but still raging about an ‘unimaginably awful’ president – and laughing about the Gonzo genius of his own partnership with Hunter S Thompson
Books
Why New Labour was the last good government
Tarnished by Iraq and Mandelson – but two new books show they made millions of lives better
Outraged and outplayed: how we lost the Brexit wars
Morgan Jones’s new book unpicks the chaos of the campaign for a second referendum
Why Marian Keyes is under-rated
The successes and flaws of The Walsh Sisters adaptation reveals a writer who truly understands women
The Holocaust tapes
A remarkable and horrific audio archive of survivors’ stories documents individual upheavals and collective trauma
The unbreakable Gisèle Pelicot
Her memoir, A Hymn to Life, details unimaginable abuse at the hands of the man she loved – and still manages to leave you with hope
A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing, the Asian horror novel with added bite
The genre is big business – but Alice Evelyn Yang’s intoxicating debut novel has ambitions well beyond gore and fantasy
Music
In defence of U2
Their new EP shows the band can be hackneyed and tokenistic. But they’re on the right side.
Can a rapper save Nepal?
A royal massacre, a deadly quake and student protests have left a country in crisis
What Michael Jackson got wrong about apostrophes
Enough! Just stop using ‘til when it should be till
Morrissey returns.. and heaven knows he’s mythical now
His new album is merely OK – but the former Smith is now more saga than singer
Calling myself Hitler? It’s art, says Kanye West
The rapper is defending himself against claims of antisemitic workplace discrimination by claiming artistic expression
Damon Albarn v the world (again)
The new Gorillaz album is a triumph. It also landed its chief creator with more accusations of cultural appropriation
Film
Matthew d’Ancona’s culture: Tommy Shelby returns to wage a holy war
Cillian Murphy rides again in an Arthurian finale to the Peaky Blinders saga
There’s nothing clever about comparing Trump to Idiocracy
Stupidity isn’t the biggest problem with MAGA – and Mike Judge’s 2006 farce is itself deeply flawed
What the new Peaky Blinders film says about Britain’s modern far right
In a WWII-set plot, the brittle bonhomie of Tim Roth’s homegrown fascist seems all too familiar
Rosebush Pruning, a film that needs ruthless pruning
Future James Bond Callum Turner can’t save a pointless family drama about unhappy rich people
What Ken Burns’s new documentary tells us about America
Ken Burns, the great documentary-maker, returns with a masterful study of the American revolution. The resonances for the present day are hard to miss
The problem that will never be solved
People with mental health issues can go to therapy, can seek help and learn to manage their conditions. But it’s important to remember that sometimes there is no happy ending
Theatre
“Bitches in stitches”
If you don’t think that a comedy club is a place to find talented actors up on stage then sorry but you’re a snob
Review: Hugh Bonneville gets back to basics
A new show in the west end examines the life of CS Lewis. But are most of the crowd simply there to see the Downton Abbey star in the flesh?
The brilliant afterlife of Tom Stoppard
The Old Vic’s elegant new production of Arcadia understands the power of the late playwright’s words
The Sopranos’ Michael Imperioli: ‘The guys in the mob are fans of Trump’
The actor talks gangsters from New Jersey to Washington DC – and why he feels ‘sick’ about the state of his country
In praise of stupid comedy
Oh, Mary!, the surprise West End hit about Mrs Abraham Lincoln, is a triumph of childish, profane pointlessness
Here’s a show you’ll love, Donald – it’s all about you
ROTUS: Receptionist of the United States is a searingly smart and unexpectedly dark piece of political satire. It’s also uncomfortably plausible
Great Lives
Lou Ottens,the inventor who set music free
His invention of the cassette tape revolutionised the way people listened to music – but he never patented it.
21st June 1926 – 6th March 2021
Shane Warne, the drift, the turn, the legend
Flawed, flamboyant and freakishly gifted, Warne turned leg-spin into high art – and made every ball an event
Charles M Schulz, the cartoonist of melancholy
How the creator of Peanuts created humour from loneliness and sadness
Asma Jahangir, the woman who would not be silenced
Her confrontation with Pakistan’s military rulers was rooted in a lifetime of activism that began in childhood and never wavered
Coretta Scott King, the architect of a legacy
How the widow of Martin Luther King Jr transformed mourning into a lifelong movement
Victoria Ocampo, the woman who made Argentina a literary power
Dismissed by friends and launched in an era when women lacked the vote, Ocampo’s Sur magazine became a defining force in 20th-century literature and politics