Eurofile

Even the world’s most prominent linguistics experts cannot agree on when humans first acquired the capacity for language

Before Segovia, the guitar was not an instrument to be taken seriously. In a matter of minutes, everything changed

If the political food lens is switched on, the Labour leader is something of a masterchef

Great political mantras started with “Liberté, égalité, fraternité”. Can we expect anything as inspiring in this election?

Many actors, in real life, are the opposite of who they portray or seem to be

Our editor-at-large’s rundown of the pick of the week’s cinema, television and books

The Champions League final explains why sport is so compelling – because it tells and retells the tales that we long to hear

Born an East Berliner, Jenny Erpenbeck has won the International Booker for her sensitive insight on life behind and beyond borders

Just when cinema really needs a bit of sunshine and uplift, along comes a Megaflopolis

A little morsel of madeleines, put it in a teaspoon and dipped in tea, summons memories of In Search of Lost Time

A dreamlike lost masterpiece about a writer’s fixation with Dostoevsky – a man who would have hated him

The picture of Northern Ireland painted by the hit BBC drama series is tense, shocking – and entirely accurate

Amsterdam prepares for Art Week against a backdrop of a new government keen to end culture funding

Four days after surviving a huge crash, his love of being behind the wheel was too strong to resist

Why the fouée – soft, airy bread similar to pitta – hasn’t crossed the Channel is a mystery

Our editor-at-large’s rundown of the pick of the week’s television, cinema and books

In her elusive beauty and skill, Arletty was the rival to Garbo

Between 350AD and 600AD, ‘boat people’ took Brittonic Celtic across the Channel from south-west England to Normandy and Brittany

On the eve of its five-year closure, the Centre Pompidou is hosting an exhibition of Constantin Brâncuși’s work that is only the second of its kind in France

The art that brought Paris back from the dead

A new book charts the surprising passion in Ukraine for cricket, the country’s fastest-growing sport – until the Russians invaded

The word is linguistically Persian, but most of the ‘stan’ nations are now inhabited by speakers of Turkic languages

Whether she had an actual gun in her hand or not, art became her weapon, a noisy defence against the world and an instrument of her reckoning with the past

In 1968, three films caught the times in different ways. And they all starred women

Our editor-at-large’s rundown of the pick of the week’s theatre, television and books

Britain's restaurants could learn something from the casual establishments of Piedmont

The remarkable Alice Rohrwacher on buried treasure and directing without a safety net

In the 1970s the three broadcast channels all had regular teleplays and anyone who wanted to write drama seriously was drawn into television

On a warm evening, Regent's Park Open Air Theatre is the best in the capital

Provocative and dramatic work from Turkey is among the highlights of this year’s Photo London

With many ageing males, the locus of anxiety is, of course, an actual locus on the head

How Australian singer Nellie Melba – born Helen Porter Mitchell – took her new surname from a mill stream in Derbyshire