Culture

By Anna Zhila John Lennon would have been 85 this week. And you know what that means. The photos will be doing the rounds again. The round glasses, the long hair, the white piano. Saint John of the Peace and Love movement. The working-class hero, the martyr. The man who just wanted to give peace…

By Yulia Tulegenova So the Tate has discovered Nigeria. There’s a big, serious show on at the moment. “Nigerian Modernism.” It’s full of incredible work, over 250 pieces from the 1940s through to the 80s. The kind of show that makes you feel the weight of the institution, the grand statement being made. And the…

By Anna Zhila Someone asked me the other day about Matt Damon. Not about a specific film, just… about him. And I realised it’s a surprisingly tricky question. What is the Matt Damon ‘thing’? He’s been one of the biggest movie stars in the world for what, twenty-five years? But when you picture him, what…

By Irma Ratiani, literary critic, Professor of Comparative Literature, Tbilisi State University, Georgia This review is an independent assessment. No fee or editorial input was accepted from the author or publisher. Eastern Empire (hereafter “EE”) tells the story of Marina, from Russia and Li Jing, from China. They meet as students in Beijing and later…

By Lee Sharrock About the Author. Lee Sharrock is an internationally recognised curator, art critic and communications consultant based in London. She began her career as Global Creative PR Director at Saatchi Gallery and later served as Head of Global Creative PR for Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide. Sharrock contributes expert analysis on global art and…

A review of Taylor Swift's The Life of a Showgirl. Strip away the podcast announcement, the cinema release and the records, and what remains is merely fine.

By Yulia Tulegenova It began not with a bang, but with a box-office whimper. Fifty years ago, a film landed in British cinemas, flickered briefly, and then all but vanished. It was greeted by critical shrugs and empty seats, dismissed by one reviewer as "campy trash" (absolutely rubbish) and another as a sparkle-less rehash of…

By Maria Bregman For a writer, silence is not an absence of sound. It is an absence of self. For more than a decade, one of the most significant literary voices of our time went quiet. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the author whose novels mapped the fault lines of identity, culture, and love with breathtaking precision,…

The Da Vinci Code author announced his engagement in the afterword of his latest book. Who the Dutch equestrian is, and what the quiet announcement closes off.

By Anna Zhila Some mysteries are not born, but made. They are assembled, piece by piece, from stray events and human anxieties until they acquire a gravity of their own, pulling in facts and fictions alike. The Bermuda Triangle is perhaps the finest example of such a creation; a story so potent it has managed…

By Anna Zhila The story of New York Fashion Week is often told through its absences. We talk about the big names who have decamped to Europe, the designers who opt for the intimacy of a private appointment over the spectacle of the runway, or those who simply show when they feel like it. Ralph…

By Anna Zhila So far, 2025 has been a year of strange echoes and startling confessions. If you listen closely to the music that has defined the months, you begin to hear a conversation taking place. It is a dialogue about memory, identity, and the very idea of genre in an age where every sound…

By Yulia Tulegenova What the Subplots of 2025 Reveal About Television's New Order An awards ceremony is never just about the awards. Beneath the shimmering surface of gowns, forced smiles, and tearful acceptances, the annual Emmy Awards function as a cultural seismograph, measuring the tremors shifting the landscape of modern entertainment. This year, the fault…

By Yulia Tulegenova To consider the career of Colin Firth, who turns sixty-five this month, is to reflect on the evolution of the English gentleman on screen. For over three decades, he has been its primary architect and its most compelling saboteur. He is an actor defined by a certain kind of restraint, yet his…

By Yulia Tulegenova To remake Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low is an act of profound hubris. The 1963 original is a masterpiece of moral tension, a film built from stone, steel, and silence. It is a slow, methodical dissection of a man’s soul, rendered in stark black and white. For Spike Lee, a director whose…