Art & Culture

Another summer, and another assault on the unscaled mountains of literature. Having woefully failed at 2017’s attempt on Henry James, who fell foul of a sudden addiction to his sleuthier cousin PD, I’m once again preparing...

From the Yangtze river to Ladbroke Grove, the six stories shortlisted for the Guardian and Fourth Estate BAME short story prize offer a whistlestop tour of the contemporary world, taking in environmental disaster and the aftermath of the...

At their first press conference in 1967, Romeo and Juliet clutched each other’s hands. “For safety,” star Olivia Hussey insisted to the Guardian. The paper noted that director Franco Zeffirelli’s 16-year-old heroine still spoke Shakespeare with a Spanish lilt....

For a long time, a painting by Jessica Etchells hung in Rochdale Art Gallery was presumed to have been painted by her brother, artist and architect Frederick Etchells. Jessica, born in Stockport in 1892, had studied at art school,...

Around this time of year, critics like to debate which artist has provided us with the definitive sound of the summer. With apologies to Cardi B, George Ezra and Drake, the answer is, unarguably, Abba. Mamma...

Timothée Chalamet, Judi Dench and Amandla Stenberg will be among the names packing the red carpet at the Toronto film festival in September, it has been revealed, after the festival announced the first batch of its lineup on...

The winner: Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again While four weeks of the World Cup and the heatwave combined to bring tough times to the UK cinema sector, a recovery is now under way, thanks to the arrival...

A team of UK scientists believe they have found the formula for box office success. After analysing data from 6,147 movie scripts and filtering it through a series of algorithms, the researchers have identified the emotional...

There are many reasons why the first Mamma Mia! movie was such a smash hit, but we can all agree Pierce Brosnan’s singing was not one of them. He sounded like a labrador trapped under a...

AMonumental Journey, the Kerry James Marshall sculpture that was unveiled on 12 July in Des Moines, Iowa, is a behemoth. Standing 30ft tall, it comprises two tapered cylindrical volumes, minimalist abstractions of west African talking drums...