Charlie Connelly
24 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
Read the full article03 April 2024
Suzanne Valadon: The eccentric artist who gave her name to an asteroid
Even for all her success and the wealth that came with it, Valadon’s bohemianism remained undiminished
Read the full article03 April 2024
No woman is an island
Ireland is going through a golden literary age – but Sinéad Gleeson’s extraordinary debut stands out from the rest
Read the full article20 March 2024
Claude Debussy: The composer who captured the rhythms of the sea
Finesse, sensuality and richness are what Debussy brought to a staid musical world unprepared for such an emphatic upending of form and technique
Read the full article20 March 2024
The birth of the bookshop
How an 18th-century Somerset cobbler’s obsessive love of reading shaped the world of bookselling as we know it
Read the full article13 March 2024
Willem de Kooning: The unintentional painter
To the Dutchman commercial art was just as fulfilling as something more purely creative – and it came with a wage
Read the full article13 March 2024
The hardest truths: Clara Dupont-Monod and the weight of the past
In a new book by a best-selling French author, ancient onlookers watch a family come to terms with a disabled child
Read the full article06 March 2024
Mikhail Bulgakov: The USSR's most deliberate provocateur
A barely concealed desire for the old Russian empire would infuse his work but even this did not preclude Stalin’s tacit admiration
Read the full article06 March 2024
The lady vanishes: the mystery of H Ellen Browning
A great writer travelled to Hungary, wrote a single book, and then disappeared. All she left behind was a masterpiece
Read the full article28 February 2024
Horst Buchholz: The man who made Germans cool again
He arrived in the US as the “James Dean of Germany” but that promise would never truly be fulfilled
Read the full article28 February 2024
Seamus Heaney’s songs of the earth
How a Danish archaeologist’s book about ancient bodies found buried in peat bogs inspired some of the poet’s greatest work
Read the full article21 February 2024
Stefan Zweig: The perpetual exile longing for the Viennese life he once knew
Many exiled European writers embraced their situation, but for Zweig the loss of his nation represented the loss of his identity
Read the full article21 February 2024
Esther Rutter: Her hopes rose in Grasmere
How a young woman finally unlocked the life ahead of her by spending a year at Wordsworth’s cottage in the Lake District
Read the full article14 February 2024
Kralle Krawinkel: The guitarist who put the Dada into Da Da Da
As good a musician as Keith Richards, the German was never entirely comfortable in the limelight
Read the full article14 February 2024
A family on the edge of the world
No other writer has captured the singular beauty of the northern French coast like Rebecca Gisler in her debut novel
Read the full article07 February 2024
Anna Anderson: The woman who claimed to be the daughter of the last Tsar
Once the toast of New York society, the mystery of why she did what she did remains
Read the full article07 February 2024
I’m a celeb.. get me a book deal
Serge Gainsbourg’s novel was unquestionably a stinker, but a surprising number of novels by famous people stand up to scrutiny
Read the full article31 January 2024
Fred Buscaglione: The Turin boy who was the face of post-war Italy
The singer almost came to embody the nation’s revival before it all ended at the dawn of a decade that could have been made for him
Read the full article31 January 2024
The page against the machine
A Russian author is declared a ‘terrorist’ for opposing Putin. American writers are banned in right-wing states. Where will this end?
Read the full article24 January 2024
Edward G Robinson: The Romanian all-American personification of prohibition
The role of Rico in Little Caesar proved as career-defining for Robinson as Frankenstein’s monster was for Boris Karloff or Dracula for Bela Lugosi
Read the full article24 January 2024
Pierre Boulle, from sabotage to screen
French Resistance spy Boulle took up writing almost on a whim – then created the basis for two all-time classic films
Read the full article17 January 2024
Nora Kovach: The dancer who defected
More famous dancers would follow her lead but Nora Kovach was the first, the pioneer, arguably the bravest of them all
Read the full article17 January 2024
Magic in the margins: what links Marlene Dietrich with Coleridge and Kerouac?
All were fans of writing their own thoughts on the pages of the books they read
Read the full article10 January 2024
Uta Hagen: The best - and most demanding - acting coach in the business
While she became one of the most highly respected names in the history of US theatre, Hagen brought a European sensibility to Broadway
Read the full article10 January 2024
The hippo who went shopping: a vivid portrayal of the refugee experience
A real-life zoo breakout is the first in a series of tumultuous events to befall the refugee hero of Leo Vardiashvili’s impressive debut novel
Read the full article03 January 2024
Mistinguett: The song-and-dance showgirl who owned the Paris stage
So emblematic of the city’s spirit did she become that Mistinguett seemed timeless even in her own lifetime
Read the full article03 January 2024
Welcome to this year’s must-reads
2024 should go down as a vintage year for female authors
Read the full article