3 d. ago We Love Green: What London can learn from the Parisian version of All Points East

From location to lineup (and a fabulously French food offering), here’s why you should sack off one of your London day festival for Paris next summer

Politics

4 d. ago Brotherless Night by VV Ganeshananthan audiobook review – love and conflict in Sri Lanka

The civil war transforms a young trainee doctor’s life as she copes with her feelings for a Tamil Tiger in last year’s Women’s prizewinning novelBrotherless Night opens with 16-year-old Sashi Kulenthiren, who hopes to be a doctor like her eldest brother, making tea when the kettle slips out of her hand, causing her to pour boiling water on herself. When a neighbour, K, hears her screams, he rushes over to help, cracking raw eggs over the scalds to soothe the pain. “So I began as K’s patient though he ended as mine,” Sashi reflects.Set in 1980s Sri Lanka, VV Ganeshananthan’s coming-of-age novel – which won the 2024 Women’s prize for fiction – is an epic and hard-hitting tale of family and survival as it documents life during the civil war between Tamil separatists and the Sinhalese majority that lasted three decades. Before fighting breaks out, Sashi’s most pressing problem is whether she will pass her exams at school. But soon violence and kidnapping become the norm, communities are...

Events

4 d. ago Love Forms by Claire Adam review – the power of a mother’s loss

Forty years on, a Trinidadian woman has never stopped looking for the daughter she gave up for adoption, in a quietly devastating novelClaire Adam’s 2019 novel Golden Child was her debut, but it felt like the work of a master. It was tender, ravishing, shattering – you believed every word of it. The book had an effortless narrative authority that most first-time novelists would kill for.Love Forms is every bit as alive and convincing, and returns us to Trinidad, with its potent fizz of colour, heat and political instability. But unlike the earlier book, it’s also set partly in south London – the writer’s own home turf – and has a mother, rather than a father, at its heart. Continue reading...

Politics

6 d. ago Love & Rage: Munroe Bergdorf review – trans activist opens up about the toll visibility takes

Essex-born model and activist shows remarkable grace, resilience and honesty in the face of online vitriol and hostile TV interviewersWhen she was younger, Munroe Bergdorf didn’t want to be queer or black. “I just wanted to fit in. Now those are the two things that I love most about myself.” It would be almost impossible to watch this documentary about the trans model and activist without feeling a surge of admiration for her resilience and grace. Bergdorf hit the headlines with a hiring-and-firing scandal in 2017 when L’Oréal sacked her as the face of a UK campaign following Facebook comments she wrote in response to a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.Watching the backlash in Love & Rage, we see that Bergdorf didn’t hide away. She went on Good Morning Britain, where Piers Morgan snapped at her like an angry yorkshire terrier. Bergdorf is willing to share a platform with people who deny her existence, and it looks incredibly bruising at times. There’s a clip ...

Politics

6 d. ago Nico Raskin earns swooning review as Rangers mate showered in love amid £5m transfer exit push

The 24-year-old capped off the best season of his career with a game-changing cameo in the 4-3 win over Wales

Economics

1 week ago In Praise of Love at Orange Tree Theatre review: real warmth with the cliches of the age

This Terence Rattigan play is about repression and marriage which has warmth beneath its study in non-communication

Events

1 week ago Nintendo’s Switch 2 is the upgrade of my dreams – but it’s not as ‘new’ as some might hope

The long-trailed console offers sturdier hardware, improved graphics and seamless online functionality. But it’s more of an update than a revolutionLaunch week is finally here, and though I would love to be bringing you a proper review of the Nintendo Switch 2 in this week’s newsletter, I still don’t have one at the time of writing. In its wisdom, Nintendo has decided not to send review units out until the day before release, so as you read this I will be standing impatiently by the door like a dog anxiously awaiting its owner.I have played the console, though, for a whole day at Nintendo’s offices, so I can give you some first impressions. Hardware-wise, it is the upgrade of my dreams: sturdier JoyCons, a beautiful screen, the graphical muscle to make games look as good as I want them to in 2025 (though still not comparable to the high-end PlayStation 5 Pro or a modern gaming PC). I like the understated pops of colour on the controllers, the refined menu with its soothing chimes an...

Politics

1 week ago 'Crazy plane lady' Tiffany Gomas announces new career move two years after viral plane rant

The woman dubbed the 'crazy plane lady' for her viral meltdown nearly two years ago has announced a new career move.

Politics

2 w. ago Honest mum's review: Love to Dream sleep bag and Sleep Machine for ideal baby sleep

We tested out a Love to Dream sleep bag and its white noise Sleep Machine to see what worked for my 18-month-old toddler

Economics

2 w. ago Along Came Love review – l’amour, loss and lingering shame in eventful French relationship movie

Director Katell Quillévéré explores the ravages of romance in an intelligently performed period piece about a shamed mother and a closeted husbandThe title of Katell Quillévéré’s first movie, Un Poison Violent from 2010, was taken from Serge Gainsbourg’s song Un poison violent, c’est ça l’amour, and the awful toxicity of love is a theme that has run through her work ever since. It is an underground stream that has become very much an overground stream in this new, heartfelt movie. It’s robust and a little unsubtle, without the nuances and indirections that govern her best work, but handsomely produced and resoundingly performed, avowedly autobiographical and inspired by her grandmother. Quillévéré has said that her influences are Maurice Pialat for the tough realism and Douglas Sirk for the melodrama and the sense of buried shame. I wonder if there isn’t some David Lean in there for the final scene at the railway station.Madeleine is a young single mother played by Anaïs Demoustier;...

Politics

2 w. ago Jennifer Lawrence and Oprah dragged into Diddy trial circus: All the celebs who have been mentioned so far as trial resumes

Sean 'Diddy' Combs' trial for sex-trafficking and racketeering is on its third week in New York after a Memorial Day break.

Politics

2 w. ago The Venus Effect review – a sizzling queer romcom without the cliches

A funny, heart-on-sleeve Danish drama that cleverly captures the complexities of coming out and queer identity with a character that wonders: am I gay enough to be gay? Technically, this film is a romcom – in that it is funny and romantic. But it’s not a romcom in the sense of adhering to the formulaic character types and well-worn plot beats that we’re used to seeing the likes of Jennifers Aniston, Lawrence and Lopez navigate with such aplomb. It is the story of twentysomething Liv (Johanne Milland) and her burgeoning attraction to Andrea (Josephine Park), and is a lovely, well-acted and sincere Danish independent film with plenty of humour; it wears its tender heart on its sleeve and hews closely to the form and style of a coming-of-age film.Nobody here is coming-of-age, though; they’re already-of-age, but in Liv’s discovery of her sexuality, perhaps it could be a coming-of-orientation film. The Venus Effect is strong on the things which matter in such stories: sizzling chemistry ...

Politics

3 w. ago In The Mood For Love: A cheeky joyride around David Hockney's earliest works

An exhibition at Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert has unearthed rarely seen pieces from Hockney’s student days, where he documents his friends, lovers and plenty of penises

Politics

3 w. ago Every Jennifer Lawrence Film: Here are all 26 of the Hunger Games star's movies ranked from best to worst

She may be one of the world’s most successful actors, but Jennifer Lawrence has had a fair amount of misses alongside her cinematic hits.

Culture

3 w. ago Cannes Film Festival 2025: Here are 21 amazing pictures of the stars on the red carpet

It’s one of the biggest events of the year for the cinema industry.

Culture

3 w. ago Jennifer Lawrence tipped for Oscars glory 12 years after her last win as Cannes critics praise her 'mesmerising' performance as a struggling mother in Die, My Love

Jennifer Lawrence has been tipped for Oscars glory after critics praised her 'mesmerising' performance in Lynne Ramsay's Die, My Love.

Events

4 w. ago Jennifer Lawrence details 'brutal' motherhood experience which has changed her life

Jennifer Lawrence has opened up about the 'brutal' but 'lifechanging' experience of becoming a mother, after the actress welcomed her second child earlier this year.

Politics

4 w. ago Biggest Cannes fashion fails of 2025: Jennifer Lawrence and Nicole Kidman suffer awkward red carpet mishaps

Unfortunately for an unlucky few, the hours spent planning Cannes Film Festival 2025 outfits were overshadowed by embarrassing outfit mishaps.

Events

4 w. ago Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson are everyone's Cannes crush for 2025

Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson have turned us all into teenagers again. Here’s why their pairing is so electric

Politics

4 w. ago The Love That Remains review – startling tragicomic portrait of a fractured family

Cannes film festivalIcelandic director Hlynur Pálmason examines a broken marriage through stunning imagery and quirky fantasy visions, but his new comic tone undermines the painIcelandic film-maker Hlynur Pálmason gave us the haunting historical drama Godland and the challenging and bizarre thriller A White, White Day; now he has changed things up with this startling, amusing, vaguely frustrating movie. The Love That Remains is a portrait of a fractured family and a sundered marriage which, with its dreamy piano score, fantasy visions and quirky sequences to go with the dead-serious scenes of purported emotional pain, introduces a slightly disconcerting but certainly intriguing new comic tone.Pálmason’s visual and compositional sense is as commanding as ever, with some stunning imagery of the Icelandic landscape. But it is flavoured with a new tone of persistent, playful unseriousness, which finally morphs into a tragicomic spectacle of male loneliness. In some places this film does...

Events