Highlights
Art
How’s this for a sensation: The 2026 Turner Prize is safe and serious
This year’s shortlist is unlikely to attract much controversy – and Kira Freije should win
Why Cézanne is the artists’ artist
His peers bought his paintings when galleries and museums were not interested – and he influenced everyone from Picasso to Hockney
The Manhattan art couple who should have been huge – but weren’t
Gifted and good-looking, photographer Peter Hujar and artist Paul Thek seemed destined for fame and fortune. What happened?
Dark Tales, the photo exhibition that celebrates British weirdness
Martin Parr, Don McCullin and a host of others uncover the menace, mystery and magic hiding beneath the surface of ordinary life
The secret life of Renoir’s party paintings
The people-watching painter’s scenes of dancing and flirting captured a Paris on the brink of a social revolution
Who put the penises in the Bayeux Tapestry?
The women who made the masterpiece filled it with sex, violence and propaganda
Books
Madeleine Riffaud, the poet who blew up Nazi trains on her 20th birthday
She fought for the French Resistance, chronicled war and suffering and made a friend of Picasso
The Manhattan art couple who should have been huge – but weren’t
Gifted and good-looking, photographer Peter Hujar and artist Paul Thek seemed destined for fame and fortune. What happened?
Liz Truss’s new mini-book is every bit as bad as her mini-budget
BANK JOB – the crazy capitals are hers – is full of conspiracy theory, but zero self-awareness
There’s one thing AI will never be able to replace – and it’s in all of us
As machines take on more of our thinking, examples from Apple to Klarna show that the value of human connection is becoming increasingly important
‘The deep state stole my mini-budget’: An exclusive extract from Liz Truss’s new book
The short-lived PM’s Bank Job reveals how everything bad was actually someone else’s fault
The difficult side of JRR Tolkien
DJ Taylor’s enthralling biography covers both the writer’s extraordinary imagination and his reactionary views
Music
All British, all day? GB News’s new music station seems confused
GB Music Radio vows never to play a non-British artist but its rule appears a little loose
Nicki Minaj’s credibility is Trump’s latest victim
Minaj has spent her career insisting on her own power. So becoming a prop in someone else’s show seems exceptionally off-brand for the rapper
Daily Star fails to Shine with dire Gary Barlow splash
The tabloid – considered to have had a good pandemic – plumbed the depths with a nudge-nudge non-story about the Take That star
Why everyone (including me) secretly loves country music
It doesn’t belong to cowboys or Trump – it’s diverse, funny, rebellious and brilliant
Why are ‘serious’ music fans so snobbish about tribute acts?
We are willing to forgive holograms and ex-bandmates playing the hits – but not a good old-fashioned impersonator
No ABBA, no Elvis, no Swift: welcome to the all-British GB Music Radio
The hard right channel is launching its own music radio station – with no foreign acts allowed
Film
Taika Waititi’s whinge about critics is even worse than his new film
The thin-skinned director’s attack puts him in the company of ‘greats’ like Rob Schneider and Uwe Boll
The problem with Wild Horse Nine
Martin McDonagh’s film is clever and funny, but promotes the delusion that we need violent men to cure violent times
In praise of the monstrous bitch
Eleanor Johnson’s timely new book on angry women arrives just as East of Eden, Furious and Verity signal an age of female rage
Robert Pattinson’s never been better than in queasy, sleazy predator TV drama Primetime
Daring and gruelling, Lance Oppenheim’s film exposes the moral sickness of exploitation for ratings
Watch! Alastair Campbell and Mishal Husain live at Cadogan Hall to discuss new book Persevilience
Listen back to our evening with broadcaster Mishal Husain to discuss my new book, Persevilience
I watched the Elizabeth Holmes film the UK can’t yet see – it’s questionable but brilliant
You Can See Everything lets the Theranos fraudster off the hook, but that’s not really the point
Theatre
JK Rowling, George Lucas, Thomas Harris and the strange art of tanking your own winning formula
A new Hannibal Lecter theatre adaptation shows that great characters are often better off in someone else’s hands
The Lives of Others, and why Germany is still haunted by the ghosts of the Stasi
A new stage production of The Lives of Others reawakens painful memories of the East German surveillance state – and clues to why Germany now finds itself in crisis
Leaked: Quentin Tarantino’s script for his London play, The Popinjay Cavalier
The ‘swashbuckling comedy’ starring Sacha Baron Cohen will feature some familiar faces transported to the Shakespearean era
We are all Keynesians now
James Graham’s new play about the great economist has a powerfully contemporary message for our own times – a moment for government to act, intervene and address the huge challenges of the 21st century
Sutton who? Reform crime chief pulls out of 127-date theatre tour
The party’s police and crime commissioner for Norfolk faced a backlash for choosing to tread the boards
Cate Blanchett’s role-swapping reunion with Nina Hoss is an audacious triumph
Electra/Persona merges Sophocles and Bergman with enthralling results
Great Lives
Madeleine Riffaud, the poet who blew up Nazi trains on her 20th birthday
She fought for the French Resistance, chronicled war and suffering and made a friend of Picasso
Hattie McDaniel and the shame of Hollywood
The groundbreaking Gone With the Wind star who was nearly shut out of a segregated Oscars ceremony
How Orson Welles invented fake news – and predicted it would be used by liars
The great director warned that his 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast would be the tip of the iceberg
The lesson that Jamal Khashoggi left behind
The murdered Saudi dissident believed his country could change – and that a journalist must uncover all the facts so people could decide
Bessie Smith: the woman who faced down the Ku Klux Klan
When a group of white supremacists turned up outside one of her shows in the summer of 1927, the great blues singer knew just what to do
Hiroshi Yamauchi, the unlikely genius behind Nintendo
The fiercely ambitious businessman turned a family playing-card business into a global entertainment empire – by spotting talent and betting on the future