Arts and Culture

The word repechage was heard regularly at this summer’s Olympics, but its modern usage bears little relation to its original meaning

Joker: Folie à Deux takes music and makes it a medium for deception, pain and lethal misunderstanding

Constable’s painting has become an icon of Englishness. But its first cheerleaders were French

After co-writing The Thick of It and Veep, Ian Martin channels his most absurd politician yet – Boris Johnson

The male film director who puts powerful females first

The biggest-selling Portuguese music artist in history was instrumental in popularising the fado genre worldwide

Francis Ford Coppola’s hell-for-leather sci-fi epic was 40 years in the making and is an extraordinary film that defies convention

Daring choices are vindicated in the writer’s brilliant new novel about a chess player, his brother and their family

The exhibition that the artist planned finally arrives in London, 119 years late

The French photographer took half a million pictures in his life. It took only one to restore his reputation and bring him wealth and controversy

Many shows come with a content warning, but the poignant and bold My English Persian Kitchen comes with an allergy warning

The Italian photographer who captured the magic in the everyday

Photographer Christoph Irrgang returns to the sites where masterpieces were painted to see how much they have changed

The Outrun, directed by Nora Fingscheidt, tackles alcoholism, sobriety and an outsider’s search for the soul of Europe

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

The trailblazing French actress defied Hollywood’s ageism to win an Academy Award for Room at the Top

Ben Whishaw delights his fans, but the yawnometer goes off the scale

The Noel Coward play that became a hit film gets a new lease of life

Flemish physician Jan Baptist van Helmont was the first to recognise gases other than air, and coined the word ‘gas’, from the Greek ‘chaos’

A combination of deep thinking, a fascination with the everyday and a playful wit produced some of the most groundbreaking fiction of the 20th century

Spanish beef is being celebrated in the best possible way, on the corner of two streets in the City of London

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

The innovative works of Norway’s Anna-Eva Bergman, realised in metal leaf, bear comparison with Rothko and Klimt

We are once again entering a time of introspection and reminiscence as the long summer days give way to mists and mellow fruitfulness

The rise and fall of the spaghetti western

Reports about the Olympic Games in Paris illustrate the differences in sporting language between American and British English

The Frenchman relished each project with its opportunity for reinvention, presenting a new challenge each time

A major influencer in China visited and sparked a recurrent wave of visitors eager to try the same dishes they did

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

The small town of Bodø has achieved recognition as the European Capital of Culture 2024. Now, will it also recognise one of its own?