15 h. ago Domination by Alice Roberts review – a brilliant but cynical history of Christianity

The humanist historian brings objects to life beautifully, but falters when it comes to people and their beliefsDomination tells the story of how a tiny local cult became one of the greatest cultural and political forces in history. Alice Roberts puts the case that the Roman empire lived on in a different form in the church.It is not an original idea – after all the foundation prayer of Christianity says “thy Kingdom come” – but Roberts tells the story from the point of view of individual parishes and even buildings. It’s a revelation, like watching those stop-motion films of how a plant grows and blooms. There’s a section about how a Roman villa might transform into a parish, the long barn providing the footprint, the web of relationships providing the social connection, the very tiles and columns providing the building materials. I can’t think of anyone who writes better about the way objects can speak to us. There’s a passage here describing her joy on grasping wha...

Politics

3 d. ago The Two Roberts by Damian Barr review – lost story of a gay art duo

The lives of Scottish artists Bobby MacBryde and Robert Colquhoun, who found love and fame and lost it all, are vividly reimaginedWhat if the protagonist of a novel was not a single person but a couple? Damian Barr takes on this challenge, and he’s found a historic couple who make the ideal source material. Working-class Scottish artists Bobby MacBryde and Robert Colquhoun were rarely apart after they met in 1933. They lived and worked together, became famous together and then declined into desperate squalor together – even poorer than when they began.Barr knows what it’s like to conquer Glasgow from a small, working-class town on its outskirts; he knows what it’s like to find yourself feted for your portraits of the place you’ve left irrevocably behind. His memoir, Maggie and Me, was a hard-hitting yet rambunctious tale of growing up gay near Motherwell under Thatcher, uneasily aware that the woman who pushed his parents deeper into poverty also taught him that the ruthless ex...

Politics

3 d. ago The Hallmarked Man by Robert Galbraith review – a terrific, tightly plotted romp

With four murder inquiries in play, JK Rowling’s eighth Cormoran Strike novel avoids the page-padding longeurs of previous volumes – but will he finally tell Robin how he feels about her?In his popular BBC series Just One Thing, the late Michael Mosley made the case for resistance training. Lifting weights, he explained, not only builds stronger muscles, it also boosts the immune system, maintains a healthy heart and improves brain function. Best of all, it can be done in your kitchen, using ordinary domestic items: pints of milk in place of dumbbells, say, or squats wearing a backpack full of books.Anyone intending to use Robert Galbraith’s Strike novels for this purpose would be advised to seek the advice of a GP. The Hallmarked Man may not be the heftiest of the eight so far – it does not even make it into the top three – but it still clocks in at a cool 912 pages. Galbraith’s tendency to whopperdom has in the past elicited a fair amount of griping from critics, me among them, wh...

Events

7 d. ago After the Hunt review – Julia Roberts faces a dilemma in Guadagnino’s muddled campus accusation drama

Venice film festivalLuca Guadagnino’s latest – also starring Ayo Edebiri and Andrew Garfield – is clenched in its own sense of relevance, as a desire to find complexity in a scandal at Yale becomes a noncommittal jumble of ideasLuca Guadagnino misfires with this bafflingly overlong, overwrought #MeToo campus accusation drama from screenwriter Nora Garrett, broadly in the tradition of David Mamet’s Oleanna or Neil LaBute’s The Shape of Things. It is worryingly muddled and contrived, perhaps in need of further script drafts to excavate a clearer and more satisfying drama inside.Julia Roberts and Ayo Edebiri star, with Andrew Garfield and Michael Stuhlbarg in supporting roles; they are all doing their considerable best, each frankly hampered by the unfocused and uncertain characterisation in the material itself, which, by the time it finally reaches its coda-finale of confrontation, is almost bizarrely inert, anticlimactic and incoherent. The movie is clenched with its own sense of con...

Events

7 d. ago Interview at Riverside Studios review: glib, overcooked, and with zero chemistry

Robert Sean Leonard is a washed-up political journalist interviewing an influencer played by Paten Hughes in this glib two-hander

Politics

2 w. ago Mysterious ancient cross depicting site of Jesus' crucifixion rewrites Christian history

An ancient plaque depicting a cross styled after Golgotha, the site where Christians believe Jesus was crucified, has been uncovered in a surprising location that challenges beliefs.

Politics

2 w. ago St Augustine pictured as black in children's book published by Church of England as part of diversity drive

The saint, one of the most influential figures in Christian history, has been illustrated as black in a new book called Heroes of Hope.

Politics

3 w. ago Britons risk 'losing sight' of Christian history, atheist historian Alice Roberts laments... after mocking believers at Easter

The academic, 52, told BBC History Magazine that Christianity is a 'compelling and important' part of British culture and appeared to lament the fact that belief is on the decline.

Events