Charlie Connelly
24 July 2024
The fire in Erich Kästner
The writer who risked his life to watch his own books burned by Nazis – so he could write about it
Read the full article24 July 2024
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: The Conrad of the air
He was only truly fulfilled when either in the air or writing about being in the air
Read the full article17 July 2024
Cécile Aubry: The actress who dreamed up Belle et Sébastien
‘The Gay Girl from Gaul’ had a brief, traumatic – and wet – experience of stardom
Read the full article17 July 2024
Stamp of disapproval
Self-service libraries with automated kiosks are taking over. But we lose librarians at our peril
Read the full article10 July 2024
Ivana Trump: The Czech who chased the American dream
With an eye for the smallest detail as well as the big picture, Trump became a vital driving force of the family business empire
Read the full article10 July 2024
Ismail Kadare, the voice of Albania
Writing during the turbulent regime of Enver Hoxha led the writer into compromise – as well as greatness
Read the full article03 July 2024
The revolutionary who changed the world of design forever
The common portrayal as a humourless Teuton could not have been further from a man whose work was infused with nuance, warmth and joy
Read the full article03 July 2024
The books of summer
From remote Spain to the US Midwest via the Eternal City and Moominland, here are 10 must-reads for those long, warm days ahead
Read the full article26 June 2024
The unlikely screen god
The advent of sound signalled the end of the silent movie star's career
Read the full article26 June 2024
Kathleen Jamie’s ‘Cairn’ is poetry in prose
The Scottish writer infuses quiet moments with beauty and profundity. Her new book is so good it’s almost impossible to let it go
Read the full article19 June 2024
The dreamer who looked to the stars
The German-American science writer had an ability to straddle effortlessly the worlds of advanced engineering and mass popular culture
Read the full article19 June 2024
Vote for election fiction
Ahead of July 4, why not read about far more thrilling polls courtesy of Dickens, Wodehouse, Trollope… and even Jeffrey Archer?
Read the full article12 June 2024
The actor who gave Nazis nuance
Ingrid Bergman said the German possessed more charm in his little finger than most men had in their whole body
Read the full article12 June 2024
Kicking off a football revolution
A choice of reading for the Euros includes the man who prescribed a cure for English football’s problems, a generation early
Read the full article05 June 2024
The composer who forged his own path
Ligeti’s rigorous antipathy to ideology was maintained throughout his life and extended way beyond his music
Read the full article05 June 2024
Ian Penman’s portrait of a dead man
A new book tells the story of a German film-maker who tried to break with the country’s past
Read the full article29 May 2024
The Apostle of the guitar
Before Segovia, the guitar was not an instrument to be taken seriously. In a matter of minutes, everything changed
Read the full article29 May 2024
A writer on the wall
Born an East Berliner, Jenny Erpenbeck has won the International Booker for her sensitive insight on life behind and beyond borders
Read the full article22 May 2024
Following in Fyodor’s footsteps
A dreamlike lost masterpiece about a writer’s fixation with Dostoevsky – a man who would have hated him
Read the full article22 May 2024
The racing driver who tried to hold fate at bay
Four days after surviving a huge crash, his love of being behind the wheel was too strong to resist
Read the full article15 May 2024
Cricket in the blood
A new book charts the surprising passion in Ukraine for cricket, the country’s fastest-growing sport – until the Russians invaded
Read the full article15 May 2024
The pioneer in art-as-spectacle
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
Read the full article08 May 2024
Erich von Stroheim, a great European life
He arrived in America pretending to be the son of an Austrian count but became one of early cinema’s most adventurous and meticulous directors
Read the full article08 May 2024
Fall of the rare book thieves
The recent bust by Europol of an international ring of thieves targeting rare Russian editions has shocked the classic book world
Read the full article01 May 2024
The family at the end of the world
The apocalypse comes to a group of siblings in south-east France in We Are Together Because, a stunning new novel by Kerry Andrew
Read the full article01 May 2024
Maria Montessori: The woman who created the miracle of San Lorenzo
The Italian revolutionised children’s education and established the schools that carry her name all over the world to this day
Read the full article24 April 2024
Mstislav Rostropovich: The cellist who soundtracked the fall of the Wall
Whatever and wherever he played, his deep feeling for the music made the instrument seem like an extension of him
Read the full article24 April 2024
Beautiful spark of divinity
Beethoven’s fascination with the Enlightenment eventually led him to adapt Schiller’s poem An die Freude (Ode to Joy) into his Ninth Symphony
Read the full article17 April 2024
Alida Valli: The actress who turned a walk into a victory parade
The Italian will be forever remembered for a wordless walk in a Viennese cemetery
Read the full article17 April 2024
The lost stories of Glasgow
The last-minute cancellation of the city’s intimate and unpretentious book festival Aye Write is an act of cultural vandalism
Read the full article10 April 2024
Roland Topor: The polymath who made a career out of the grotesque
A dream provided an epitaph inadvertently appropriate for a man who spent his life producing art and literature that shocked and appalled the unsuspecting
Read the full article10 April 2024
Andrej Nikolaidis and the wild flame of hatred
The Montenegrin has been the subject of a mock trial and effigy-burning over his latest novel, Anomaly
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