3 d. ago Same River, Twice: Putin’s War on Women by Sofi Oksanen – review

This harrowing study of the Russian leader’s weaponising of sexual violence argues that misogyny goes hand in hand with imperialismIn 1944, the Red Army pushed the Germans out of the Baltic state of Estonia. Soon afterwards, Soviet officers took away Sofi Oksanen’s great-aunt for interrogation. It was night. When she returned the next morning Oksanen’s young relative appeared unscathed. In fact, she had been raped. She could only mutter a few words: “Jah, ära”, or “Yes, please don’t”.The consequences of her unspoken ordeal were lifelong. As Oksanen relates it, her great-aunt became mute. She never married, had children or a relationship. Nor were the men who abused her punished. After the Soviet reoccupation – which saw Estonia erased from Europe’s map – she lived quietly with her ageing mother. Black-and-white family photos and the stories that went with them were hidden.Same River, Twice: Putin’s War on Women by Sofi Oksanen is published by HarperVia (£16.99). To support the Guard...

Politics

8 d. ago Little Women review: an energetic take on classic tale of sisterly love

Hard to fault this energetic production, infused with emotional intelligence

Politics

8 d. ago Little Women at the Lowry review: an energetic take on classic tale of sisterly love

Hard to fault this energetic production, infused with emotional intelligence

Politics

3 w. ago Women of Llanrumney at Stratford East review: this Welsh slave drama is bold, horrific and remarkably assured

Azuka Oforka’s debut play marks her as one to watch

Events

3 w. ago War Paint – Women at War review – female conflict artists get their moment in the spotlight

From quilting in Japanese prisoner camps to graffiti in Sudan via Rachel Whiteread, Maggi Hambling and Lee Miller, this documentary covers myriad artistic responses to warMargy Kinmonth’s latest feature documentary represents the third in a trilogy of films about artists and war, following Eric Ravilious: Drawn to War, which focused on the second world war artist of the title, and the more first world war-skewed War Art with Eddie Redmayne, which showed on ITV. This time the focus is on female artists and war – as the title suggests with its cringe-inducing pun on a slang term for makeup.It’s a perfectly valid and potentially fruitful subject, but the analysis here is often frustratingly superficial. Kinmonth puts herself front and centre as the onscreen interviewer and narrator, so one has to blame her directly for the daftness of some her questions. For instance, she asks sculptor Rachel Whiteread: “I’m wondering, is there a difference in the perception of female artists to men, a...

Events

3 w. ago Hidden Portraits: The Untold Stories of Six Women Who Loved Picasso by Sue Roe review – artist as lothario

Françoise Gilot is the most compelling figure in this biography of the painter’s lovers – but you get the feeling she would have loathed this book“No woman leaves a man like me,” Pablo Picasso is supposed to have declared to Françoise Gilot, his partner and the mother of two of his children, in the spring of 1953. The couple had by this point been together for a decade, their first encounter having taken place in 1943 in a black market cafe in Paris (Picasso, who was then 61, had approached the 21-year-old Gilot bearing a bowl of cherries). But now he’d become involved with Jacqueline Roque, the woman with whom he’d go on to spend the final years of his life.What to do about this? Gilot would not confront him. Better simply to call his bluff. “I am very secretive,” she said in an interview in 2016. “I smile and I’m polite, but that doesn’t mean that I will do as I said I will do He thought I would react like all his other women. That was a completely wrong opinion.” The following ye...

Culture

3 w. ago Knight’s sacking exposes England’s failure to plan captaincy succession | Raf Nicholson

Now just eight weeks until their next series they must appoint a coach, a captain and try to show they are serious about cultural changeThey say in cricket that one brings two: something that has proved true in the case of the England and Wales Cricket Board’s post-Ashes review. On Friday, Jon Lewis was sacked as head coach and, 24 hours later, Heather Knight followed him out of the door.A 16-0 error-strewn Ashes whitewash required big change and the ECB has certainly delivered on that score. Lewis was always unlikely to survive after his infamous “Bondi-to-Coogee” interview, during which he blamed the defeat on Australia’s sunnier climes, made him a laughing stock. But firing Knight is a far more radical step – an admission that, despite the insistence to the contrary of Clare Connor, the managing director of women’s cricket, the ECB’s review has indeed uncovered evidence of a poor team culture. Why else would they end Knight’s reign at a point when she is a mere 15 months away fro...

Events

3 w. ago The Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz by Anne Sebba review – playing for their lives

The remarkable story of conductor Alma Rosé and the musicians who survived the Holocaust by performing amid horrific conditionsWhen 13-year-old Pearl Pufeles disembarked from the cattle car at Auschwitz in March 1944, she was surprised to hear the strains of Dvořák and Smetana wafting towards her. “Gosh,” thought the Czechoslovakian schoolgirl, “this can’t be that bad if they play music here.” But it was that bad and, indeed, so much worse. Pearl and her twin sister Helen were swiftly selected as laboratory fodder for Dr Josef Mengele’s grotesque medical experiments.It isn’t clear which orchestra Pearl had heard that day. Auschwitz was a 15 sq mile complex with multiple sub-camps and there were at least six “official” orchestras staffed by prisoners who had been funnelled into southern Poland from all over Europe. Some of these orchestras concentrated on the classical repertoire, albeit without the Jewish composers Mendelssohn and Mahler. Others specialised in Sunday ...

Politics