Sitting in his house in Rome, an overstuffed bookcase and a distressed wooden door behind him, Willem Dafoe scrunches his hair as though kneading the thoughts in his head. The 69-year-old, Wisconsin-born actor could pass today for any genial, bristle-moustached handyman in checked shirt and horn-rimmed specs. (Perhaps he even built the bookcase and distressed … Read more
Another day, another addition to the “point and gasp” school of true crime documentaries; one which adds nothing to our understanding of a terrible crime or of those who committed it, nothing to our safety as individuals or as a society, nothing except our appetite for voyeurism and the normalisation of it. Most true crime … Read more
The photographer Lee Miller “buried” her experiences from the frontline of the second world war, where she captured the liberation of France, according to the team behind unseen images of hers that are being displayed this week. The photographs from Miller’s time in St-Malo, France, and various sites in Germany are being shown at the … Read more
A short ghost story by Graham Greene described by analysts as “an eerie gem” was published for the first time on Wednesday, a rare glimpse into the largely uncelebrated darker side of one of the giants of 20th-century literature. Reading at Night appears in the 75th issue of Strand Magazine, a New York literary quarterly … Read more
As her much-loved novel Mrs Dalloway turns 100, now is a great time to celebrate Virginia Woolf. The 20th-century modernist author and pioneer of stream-of-consciousness narration is one of the most celebrated British novelists of all time. For those looking to become more familiar with her work, author and critic Francesca Wade has put together … Read more
Concurrent London productions recently presented Oedipus as a modern politician pledging a new start (Mark Strong in the West End) and as a distant detective investigating a climate catastrophe that jeopardises Thebans’ future (Rami Malek at the Old Vic). Sophocles’ late play Oedipus at Colonus, less commonly known, looks not ahead but backwards. This elegiac … Read more
‘I’m led by stories,” Anna Perach tells me as we sit in her sun-drenched studio at Gasworks in London. The wall behind me is stacked with a rainbow of yarns, and on her desk sit a collection of texts that point to the key themes of her work: femininity, magic and the uncanny. Perach’s life-size … Read more
Two months after her husband left in 2020, Bee Wilson was startled by the clatter of a baking tin falling on to the kitchen floor. In one way this doesn’t seem particularly remarkable: Wilson is an esteemed food writer who presumably has a surplus of kitchen utensils crammed into her bulging cupboards. This tin, though, … Read more
Dez Chambers waited 15 years to get the news she didn’t want. All that time, she thought her missing little sister, Alison, might still be out there. Dez would watch documentaries about homelessness to see if perhaps she’d recognise a face, and even attempted the Salvation Army’s family tracing service. “It was hope,” she says … Read more
Erika Vikman – Ich Komme (Finland) What would Eurovision be without sexually explicit songs? Australia’s Milkshake Man by Go-Jo is quite self-explanatory; the standout is Finland’s Erika Vikman with Ich Komme (“I am coming” in German). Set to a four-on-the-floor beat and Eurodance instrumental, the track bursts with unrestrained hands-in-the-air energy. Vikman sings of pleasure, … Read more