Charlie Connelly
03 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 article20 December 2023
Baba Yaga: The fairytale scourge of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus
Attempting to steal children’s Christmas gifts from a kindly old man is only one item on the charge sheet of the cannibalistic witch
Read the full article20 December 2023
A year of magnificent exceptions in the world of books
The perfect combination of compelling narrative and wonderful writing is rare but when it works the results are unforgettable
Read the full article13 December 2023
Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha: The reformer who never quite understood the nation
His zeal doused by public apathy and establishment ambivalence, Albert became gradually overwhelmed by disillusionment
Read the full article13 December 2023
One ring and the right wing: Giorgia Meloni’s love of Tolkien
What draws Italy’s populist leader, along with a number of other far-right politicians, to the work of JRR Tolkien?
Read the full article06 December 2023
Luigi Pirandello: The relentless seeker for answers to the riddle of existence
The relentlessly prolific author of plays, poems, short stories and novels, Pirandello was always looking ahead
Read the full article06 December 2023
Writing in the present tense: books for under the Christmas tree
Tales of ice and lighthouses, the ghosts of Irish literary legends and the Iliad reborn: the books you should give this Christmas
Read the full article29 November 2023
Stéphane Grappelli: The violinist who changed the face of jazz in Europe
There was no other with his extraordinary improvising in the medium
Read the full article29 November 2023
The clot thickens: Nadine Dorries’ caffeine-fuelled torrent of words
The former Tory culture secretary and Boris Johnson superfan has written an astoundingly bad book
Read the full article22 November 2023
Shakespeare conquered the world elsewhere
The first recorded purchase of Shakespeare’s collected works came 400 years ago – and the compendium soon crossed into Europe
Read the full article22 November 2023
Louis Malle: The French director who was a cinematic maverick
Malle’s unique approach to cinema meant he was always on the hunt for ways to freshen things up, no matter the risk
Read the full article15 November 2023
Anne Michaels and the past that’s closer than we imagine
The Canadian author only writes one book each decade. But her latest novel, Held, shows why it’s worth the wait
Read the full article15 November 2023
Franz Joseph I: The Emperor who ushered in the end of the Habsburg Empire
The blame for the end of a glorious imperial story cannot be laid solely at his feet, but the longer he lived the more anachronistic his rule became
Read the full article08 November 2023
The greatest European autobiography of all?
He wrote three operas with Mozart and ended up working at a grocers in New York City: meet Lorenzo da Ponte
Read the full article08 November 2023
Robert Enke: The goalkeeper taunted by the cruelty of depression
For all the cod philosophy attached to the art, being a goalkeeper did not cause the Germany international to end his life
Read the full article01 November 2023
In cod we trust: why Britain’s national dish is nothing of the sort
The humble Friday night takeaway staple is a magnificent immigration success story
Read the full article01 November 2023
Henri Matisse: The secular artist whose masterpiece was a chapel
Never a religious man, at the end of his life converting a damp garage into a chapel became an unlikely obsession
Read the full article18 October 2023
Italo Calvino: the writer who was one of us
Born a century ago, the Italian author was the best kind of writer, because he understood what it was to be a reader
Read the full article18 October 2023
Viveca Lindfors: The Hollywood outsider with a second act on stage
The Swedish actress’s unhappy Hollywood experience prompted a lifelong questioning of what being herself actually meant
Read the full article11 October 2023
Dario Fo: The jester who spoke hard truths beneath the clowning
Few cultural figures can have combined political activism and theatre as successfully as Fo
Read the full article11 October 2023
How fascism grows: a chilling warning from history
A new translation of a novel on the rise of Nazism holds lessons for our current populist age
Read the full article04 October 2023
Joseph Pilates: The acrobat who taught the world to keep fit
Internment provided the German the perfect conditions to develop the exercise regimes that would make his name famous
Read the full article04 October 2023
Britain’s Grimm reapers
European fairy tales arrived on our shores 200 years ago – but the major part played by two London lawyers is all but forgotten
Read the full article27 September 2023
André Breton: The architect of surrealism
For all his unorthodox methods and opinions, Breton never lost a desire to create and foster an entirely new mentality
Read the full article27 September 2023
A Viennese escape to victory
It gave the world Freud and a host of cultural figures. But as a new book celebrates Austria’s capital, what about its footballers?
Read the full article20 September 2023
Millie Bobby Brown is haunted by her own ghostwriter
Actor Millie Bobby Brown used a co-writer on a novel telling a family story. What’s so wrong with that?
Read the full article20 September 2023
Adelina Patti: The Italian Bel Canto Soprano who was in a league of her own
Patti soared to fame pre-radio and pre-gramophone, making her stardom all the more impressive
Read the full article13 September 2023
Folke Bernadotte: The even-handed Swedish diplomat who saw the bigger picture
During the second world war, the nobleman negotiated the release of tens of thousands of prisoners from German concentration camps
Read the full article13 September 2023
The little local library that made me a borrower
Almost 800 public libraries have shut their doors since the Conservatives came to power. That is 800 too many
Read the full article06 September 2023
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec: Paris’s most valuable and committed chronicler
Toulouse-Lautrec was an aristocrat who recognised in the outliers of society a shared vulnerable otherness
Read the full article06 September 2023
Arthur Rimbaud, the poet of sacred disorder
As Rimbaud’s masterpiece A Season In Hell turns 150, reappraising the short life and wild times of a talented, toxic “damned soul”
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