The novel’s protagonist is violent, libidinous and so inarticulate he says ‘OK’ some 500 times. So how did the author turn his story into a tragic masterpiece?

When we meet the morning after the announcement of this year’s Booker prize, David Szalay, the winner, seems an extremely genial and gentle author to have created one of the most morally ambiguous characters in recent contemporary fiction. His sixth novel, Flesh, about the rise and fall of a Hungarian immigrant to the UK, is unlike anything you have read before.

Szalay (pronounced “Sol-oy”) is often described as “Hungarian-British”, but that has offended Canadians this morning, he says. His mother was Canadian and he was born in that country, where his Hungarian father had moved a few years earlier. “I’m arguably more Canadian than Hungarian.” Now 51, he grew up in England, graduated from Oxford University, and lived in Hungary for 15 years. To make things more confusing, he is over from Vienna, where he now lives with his wife and young son Jonathan.

Homegrown, female-driven scary movies in which witches and zombies lay waste to invading troops are proving popular in Ukraine. But why seek out horror on screen if you have so much of it in real life?

When Ukrainian horror movie The Witch: Revenge started filming in late 2023, the costumes for the Russian soldiers were sourced straight from the battlefield. “They were real Russian uniforms. The captured soldiers or the dead soldiers, they just took those uniforms and cleaned them, and we used them,” the film’s producer, Iryna Kostyuk, says, speaking from Kyiv. Having cleaned the uniforms, the film-makers then had to dirty them up again so they looked suitably lived-in. Some of the vests still had names written in them – and several had names crossed out, presumably because Russian soldiers had filched them themselves from fallen comrades. “It was quite a challenge for the [Ukrainian] actors to wear them,” the producer says.

The movie, also known as The Konotop Witch, is about a witch who has renounced her powers but re-summons them after the Russians kill her fiance. It was a runaway hit at the Ukrainian box office last year, making $1.4m – a very big number for a country during a war, facing curfews and electricity cuts. It’s also the first in a horror universe cycle, called Heroines of the Dark Times, that Kostyuk is overseeing. Kostyuk and her team have now completed the second film in the series, The Dam. A zombie splatterfest, full of gore and severed heads, it follows a unit of Ukrainian soldiers, led by a female fighter codenamed Mara, who uncover a cold war era laboratory where Soviet scientists conducted nefarious experiments in the 1950s. Mara and her team face the inevitable battle with undead Soviet soldiers – but must also confront their own innermost fears, and learn to trust one another.

Stockholm-based photographer Martina Holmberg takes £15,000 first prize for portrait of Mel, who survived car fire

A portrait of a burn survivor gazing thoughtfully out of a window has won one of the world’s most prestigious photography prizes.

The National Portrait Gallery has named Martina Holmberg, a Stockholm-based photographer, as winner of the 2025 Taylor Wessing photographic portrait prize for her portrait Mel. She wins £15,000.

Full-tilt chase sequences, a punk aesthetic and a sugar-rush soundtrack, means there is plenty of enjoyment to be had as Edgar Wright goes back to King’s original 1982 novel

Edgar Wright, that unstoppable force for good in cinema, has revived the sci-fi thriller satire last seen in 1987 with Arnold Schwarzenegger; it now stars Glen Powell and is adapted directly from the original 1982 novel written by Stephen King under his “Richard Bachman” pen-name, a futurist nightmare set in that impossibly distant year of 2025. The resulting film is never anything but likable and fun – though never actually disturbing in the way that it’s surely supposed to be and the ending is fudged and anticlimactic.

Yet there’s plenty of enjoyment to be had. Wright accelerates to a sprint for some full-tilt chase sequences; there’s a nice punk aesthetic with protest ’zines being produced by underground rebels; and Wright always delivers those sugar-rush pop slams on the soundtrack, including, of course, the Spencer Davis Group’s Keep on Running. It’s a quirk of fate that The Running Man arrives in the same year as The Long Walk, also from a King book: a similar idea, only it’s walking not running.

This is far from the first new version the cooking show’s attempted. But it might just be its most dull

If there is one tried and true formula when it comes to television, it is this: when you run out of ideas, bring the kids in. This formula is why everything from MasterChef to The Great British Bake Off to Taskmaster has, at some point, bitten the bullet and introduced a junior version. And now it’s time for Come Dine With Me to join the gang.

Which is probably a bit late, all said. It took five years for MasterChef to bring in a junior version, and just one for Bake Off. Meanwhile, Come Dine With Me is 20. To call it long in the tooth would be a profound disservice to long teeth.

The UK’s culture sector needs financial, political and public support to survive. Funding is not a ‘favour’. It is an investment in imagination, in our shared experience – and in inspiration and joy

Durham is a small, beautiful city in the north-east of England that sits in a region of rising poverty and inequality. About 45,000 people, a cathedral, a castle, a university and streets that glow every two years when the Lumiere festival fills them with light and art.

Since 2009, Lumiere has brought more than 250 artists from across the world to work in this extraordinary city. Ai Weiwei in the Cathedral’s Chapter House. Fujiko Nakaya on the riverbank. Chila Kumari Singh Burman in the market square. The festival has reached more than 1.3 million people, drawn £43m into the local economy, and involved nearly 14,000 people in community projects. It worked because it was free, exciting and good. A rare combination.

Nimble, open-minded outfits such as Nina Protocol, Cantilever and Subvert are looking to bring more money to artists, and a richer experience for listeners

The noise around Spotify this year has been louder than ever, from Liz Pelly’s book Mood Machine – a biting indictment of the company and its alleged practices, described as “error-riddled theories” by Spotify itself – to a slew of indie artists leaving the platform due to political and ethical reasons. There was even a recent music forum in California called Death to Spotify.

So the timing is fortuitous for a growing number of independent streaming and music community platforms, such as Nina Protocol, Coda, Subvert, Lissen, Vocana, and just last week a new one launched in the UK: Cantilever. “More people are definitely looking for alternatives,” says Nina Protocol’s chief executive Mike Pollard. “We strongly believe the future of music is independent.”

Announced in 2020 by the Game Awards as an inclusive programme for the industry’s next generation, the Future Class initiative has now been discontinued. Inductees describe clashes with organisers and a lack of support from the beginning

Video games have long struggled with diversification and inclusivity, so it was no surprise when the Game Awards host and producer Geoff Keighley announced the Future Class programme in 2020. Its purpose was to highlight a cohort of individuals working in video games as the “bright, bold and inclusive future” of the industry.

Considering the widespread reach of the annual Keighley-led show, which saw an estimated 154m livestreams last year, Future Class felt like a genuine effort. Inductees were invited to attend the illustrious December ceremony, billed as “gaming’s Oscars”, featured on the official Game Awards website, and promised networking opportunities and career advancement advice. However, the programme reportedly struggled from the start. Over the last couple of years, support waned. Now, it appears the Game Awards Future Class has been wholly abandoned.

Tom Hanks, Tim Allen and Joan Cusack are joined by Past Lives star Greta Lee in Disney’s highly anticipated sequel

The first trailer for Toy Story 5 has provided a brief glimpse at the highly anticipated animated sequel out next summer.

The teaser introduces a new arrival and “all-new threat to playtime” with the tagline “the age of toys is over”. The latest character is a smart tablet called Lilypad, voiced by Past Lives and Tron: Ares star Greta Lee, bringing new tech to the old toys.

The actor has over 250 screen credits, including Anna, The Way We Were and JFK, and collaborated with Andy Warhol

Sally Kirkland, the Oscar-nominated actor and one-time member of Andy Warhol’s the Factory, has died at 84.

The star of films including Anna, JFK and Bruce Almighty had entered hospice care two days before her death after a period of ill health. Last year, a GoFundMe page had been set up to help her in the wake of “life-threatening infections” and a number of falls. She had also been diagnosed with dementia.

Coroner reaches conclusion of accidental death and says author died as a result of a traumatic subdural haematoma

The author Jilly Cooper suffered a fatal head injury during a fall at her Gloucestershire home, an inquest has heard.

Cooper, 88, whose 18 novels include Riders and Rivals, was found by family at her home in Bisley at about 5pm on 4 October.

Actor said discussions about animal cruelty with director Jon Chu had led him to join Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo in renouncing meat

The actor Jeff Goldblum has credited working on the Wicked movies with his decision to turn pescatarian.

Speaking on This Morning, Goldblum, 73, said that he had been affected by the film series’ themes of animal cruelty to such an extent that he stopped eating meat.

Pugh says she also has worked with ‘fantastic’ people who helped her ‘find the story’ of sex scenes

Florence Pugh has had both positive and negative experiences with intimacy coordinators, saying some were “fantastic” and “effective”, while others were “shit” and “weird”.

Pugh was speaking on the Louis Theroux Podcast and was asked by Theroux what she felt about their role.

Star of Japan’s cinematic golden age, who collaborated with Kurosawa and played the lead in Kobayashi’s Human Condition trilogy, died from pneumonia

The Japanese stage and screen actor Tatsuya Nakadai, whose celebrated performances symbolised a golden age for the country’s cinema, has died aged 92.

Nakadai garnered more than 100 screen credits during a career spanning seven decades, but is perhaps best known internationally for his role in Ran, Akira Kurosawa’s 1985 epic set in the Sengoku “warring states” period that took its inspiration from Shakespeare’s King Lear.

More than 40 projects were recognised in the national awards, identifying contemporary designs that offer solutions to critical national issues, including housing shortages, affordability and the climate crisis

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Street photographer Daniel Arnold searches out the candid human moments of NYC, capturing a complex city alive with characters and contradictions

The streamer’s new historical drama looks back on the often forgotten story of US president James Garfield whose progressive political career was cut horribly short

The descendants of James Garfield, the 20th US president, were proud of his life but rarely spoke of his death. “We knew what had happened, that he was shot in a train station,” says James Garfield III, his great-great-great grandson. “We read about the story in books but, in one way or another, we just glanced over it.”

That changed in 2011 with the publication of Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President, a book by Candice Millard that revived interest in Garfield’s unfinished life. Her work has now inspired a Netflix drama, Death By Lightning, starring Michael Shannon as the president and Matthew Macfadyen as the drifter who gunned him down.

After decades of struggle, the warm-hearted kids’ programme has been rescued by Netflix. This could be the start of a partnership as enduring as Bert and Ernie’s

An entire generation of British adults was raised by Sesame Street. They’re easy enough to spot; they’re kind, they have had that Pointer Sisters pinball counting song as an earworm for four decades, and they were repeatedly told off at school for pronouncing the final letter of the alphabet “zee”.

But this generation is old. The last time Sesame Street was regularly broadcast in the UK was September 2001, when Channel 4 made the decision to replace it with The Hoobs. However, this all changes now. Because Sesame Street has just rolled out on Netflix for the first time.

In this excellent series, Flack’s mother Christine is steely and resolute as she questions a growing number of inconsistencies and demands answers about her daughter’s death

On the evening of 15 February 2020, news broke that the television presenter Caroline Flack had been found dead at her London home. Almost six years later, her death by suicide still feels shocking. Caroline was one of Britain’s most beloved hosts, best known as the face of Love Island UK. She had also presented The X Factor, and won the 12th series of Strictly Come Dancing alongside Pasha Kovalev. As well as an enviable TV career, she had the kind of girl-next-door approachability that made viewers feel as though they knew her off-screen as well as on it. Yet in the months before her death, her career had seemingly started to crumble, as she faced charges of assault by battery against her boyfriend, Lewis Burton.

This new series comes from the makers of the 2021 documentary Caroline Flack: Her Life and Death. While that film sensitively examined the emotional issues that had beset Flack since adolescence, Search for the Truth concentrates firmly on the months that followed the alleged assault against Burton in December 2019. Caroline’s mother, Christine, has analysed the evidence and spoken to experts – among them Caroline’s former publicist, and the former chief prosecutor of the crown prosecution service (CPS), who once personally referred to the case as one of domestic abuse. Christine’s goal is to ascertain whether her daughter was treated differently by the justice system because of who she was. In other words: did Caroline’s public profile transform a charged row between a couple over accusations of infidelity into something with far more serious consequences?

The boxers open up in a documentary about masculinity, rivalry and rebuilding relationships. Plus: Mary Berry and Jamie Oliver team up. Here’s what to watch this evening

9pm, BBC Three
A documentary that goes beyond the boxing, and follows Chris Eubank and his son Chris Eubank Jr in behind-the-scenes footage and candid interviews filmed over the course of a year. They talk about rivalries in the ring, modern masculinity, living with grief after the death of Eubank’s other son, Sebastian, in 2021, and rebuilding a strained relationship with each other. Hollie Richardson

This adaptation of Louise Kennedy’s masterly novel, set in 70s Belfast, sees a Catholic teacher drawn into a dangerous affair with a Protestant barrister. It really hits a nerve

We could be happy together, if only we weren’t here and it wasn’t now: the tragedy of sweethearts caught up in conflict, their love overcome by others’ hate, is an old and powerful story. Trespasses, an adaptation of Louise Kennedy’s novel, written by Ailbhe Keogan, hits that nerve.

A small town outside Belfast, 1975: rancour, suspicion and grief shadow every moment in the thwarted life of Cushla (Lola Petticrew), a Catholic primary-school teacher in her mid-20s who is giving up her spare time to work shifts in her brother’s pub. The priests at the school are hollering bigots, telling the children that every Protestant is an evil enemy, despite one of the kids being the son of a Catholic father and Protestant mother. Cushla takes an interest in the boy, who tends to arrive at school without a coat, and his elder brother, who shows signs of secretly sharing Cushla’s love of reading. She gives them lifts back to their house on a flag-strewn Protestant estate, at the risk of her car being pelted with bricks, and redoubles her support for the family when the dad has his legs and skull broken by vengeful neighbours.

Attenborough’s latest extravaganza is packed with such high drama it’s like Game of Thrones … if Cersei was a hyena. If only it hadn’t been bumped down the schedules because of Strictly

As I watch a leopard hunt in Kingdom, the BBC’s latest David Attenborough-narrated documentary, I find myself thinking about a YouGov survey from a few years ago that found that half of Britons wouldn’t take a free trip to the moon, with 11% turning it down because “there isn’t enough to see and do”. As well as it providing a fantastic insight into the great British public’s psyche (would outer space be better if it had Alton Towers?), I can’t help but wonder if it also explains the pressure that TV commissioners feel under to find new ways to interest the pesky human race in sights that would previously have been greeted with wonder.

Back in 2017, Blue Planet II was the most-watched programme of the year, with 14.1 million viewers tuning in to see dolphins surf on prime time. Today, the six-part Kingdom has been bumped to the teatime slot, and finding out which Strictly celeb’s rumba has been voted the most mediocre is deemed more important to the schedule.

This extraordinarily tight child kidnap drama knits all its threads together brilliantly – and the mighty Snook of Succession fame shines as a mother whose son is missing

Look, I am a mother, a neurotic and – if one of my HRT patches sloughs off without me noticing – very quickly a clinical paranoiac. But even if that were not true, this latest tale of a playdate gone unthinkably wrong would have me firmly in its grip. All Her Fault, an adaptation of bestselling thriller writer Andrea Mara’s 2021 book of the same name, braids a number of popular TV trends together, interrogating White Lotus-style the phenomenon of middle-class US affluence and the protections it offers and corruptions it encourages, a missing child narrative and an examination of the penalty women pay for motherhood. It is rare that all these things are held in balance, without at least one element becoming preachy or the thriller part becoming baggy or preposterous, but All Her Fault manages it brilliantly.

We are plunged straight into the thick of things as wealthy wealth manager Marissa Irvine (Succession’s mighty Sarah Snook) arrives to pick up her five-year-old son Milo from a playdate at the home of another school mum, Jenny (Dakota Fanning). But when she reaches the supposed address, the woman who answers the door is not Jenny, has never heard of her, or Jenny’s nanny Carrie (Sophia Lillis) who was in charge of the playdate, or Milo. It soon becomes clear that no one has seen Milo since Carrie picked him up from school. He’s gone, his online tracker found smashed to bits in the school car park, and he stays gone even after the time a ransom demand would usually have been received.

One Thousand and One Nights is the framing device for the author’s pithy and thought provoking takes on everything from eugenics to trouser suits

In the framing device that opens the Middle Eastern folk tales collected in One Thousand and One Nights, King Shahryar avenges his wife’s infidelity by ordering her execution and marrying a new virgin every night, having each of them beheaded by sunrise so they won’t have time to cheat. When he runs out of victims, the young Persian queen Shahrazad volunteers but stalls her own murder by telling the king one captivating tale after another – and those become the stories we’re reading.

As Jeanette Winterson puts it in her new book – a dizzying whirligig of memoir, history, philosophy, politics and self-help, loosely tied to commentary on the Nights – Shahrazad’s feat of creativity “refuses the present emergency – the contrived drama of a powerful man”. The echo of life in the Trump era is deliberate; for Winterson, the means by which Shahrazad changes her predicament holds out hope for a progressive politics currently losing ground to “radical-rightwing thuggery”. “A better story starts with a better story,” she writes. “Reason will not win the day. Without imagination nothing changes.”

In the Norwegian master’s latest example of ‘mystical realism’, one man makes a dreamlike, hypnotic voyage through life

“I have always known that writing can save lives,” said the Norwegian author Jon Fosse in his speech accepting the 2023 Nobel prize in literature. “And if my writing also can help to save the lives of others, nothing would make me happier.” Rare is the novelist who talks in such language these days: fiction tends to know its modest place. Fosse, who is also a poet and an essayist, and one of the most widely performed playwrights in the world, follows his own path. A case in point: Septology (2019-2021), published across three volumes, running to more than 800 pages, containing a single sentence. Forget formalism, though; his fictions, often set in fjordic Norway, are disintegration loops, quiet and incantatory, emotionally overwhelming.

At fewer than 120 pages, Vaim, his first new work since winning the Nobel, is a wisp of a thing. Divided into three sections, each narrated by a different character, it begins with Jatgeir sailing on a small boat from the small town of Vaim to the big city of Bjørgvin. His mission is to buy a needle and thread to fix a missing button. It’s a long journey and, not just at one shop but at two, he gets royally ripped off, being charged far over the odds for a single spool. He huffs and seethes, but says nothing to the storekeepers themselves. What a hick, we might think. What a chump.

A landscape of illusory peace is depicted just before the guns of battle reach it in the first world war

Leaves

A frail and tenuous mist lingers on baffled and intricate branches;
Little gilt leaves are still, for quietness holds every bough;
Pools in the muddy road slumber, reflecting indifferent stars;
Steeped in the loveliness of moonlight is earth, and the valleys,
Brimmed up with quiet shadow, with a mist of sleep.

Smith’s incantatory voice shines through in this surprisingly revelatory follow up to Just Kids and M Train

The post-pandemic flood of artist memoirs continues, but Patti Smith stands apart. The poet who wrote punk into existence before pivoting to pop stardom then ghosting fans to raise a family has, in the 21st century, leaned into literature and music with such vitality it has become hard to say which medium suits her better. It hardly matters. At 78 years old, Smith lives and breathes both.

Her latest memoir follows the tightly focused coming-of-age story Just Kids, published to great acclaim in 2010, and 2015’s more ruminative M Train. Bread of Angels splits the difference to create a more conventional autobiography. It could be described as Just Kids’ prequel and sequel, moving from Smith’s hardscrabble childhood to the near-present, where a striking twist takes the narrative back to her literal conception. It’s one of a number of revelations about an artist whose story would otherwise seem, by now, well-chiseled into the tablets of rock history.

The worlds of the haves and the have-nots clash, in a toxic friendship between two women brought together by a school reunion

Of all the seven deadly sins, envy is the last to be commodified. You can understand why – unlike lust, anger or even sloth, it’s not something to admit to. In his Allegory with Venus and Cupid, Bronzino depicted envy as an ugly green hag, clutching her head and howling impotently; now Instagram has allowed anyone online to gain access to images of the lifestyles of those richer, prettier and luckier than ourselves.

Ruth, the narrator of Harriet Lane’s third novel, Other People’s Fun, is corroded by it. Alone, her marriage over, her daughter grown and her freelance work as dull as it is low paid, she is that most dangerous of characters: an overlooked middle-aged woman with nothing to lose. When she bumps into beautiful, stupid and entitled Sookie at a school reunion, she reconnects with her teenage self “and all her violent desires”. Having flown under the radar as a pupil, noticed by Sookie only because she lent her her essays, she has perfect recall of her own petty humiliations, now amplified by the fact that she can stalk her contemporaries’ “best lives” on social media, while almost none of them remember her.

The once-great author revisits St Cloud’s orphanage all too briefly, in a novel that begins with an adopted girl but wanders all over the place

If some writers have an imperial phase, where they hit the heights time after time, then American novelist John Irving’s ran through a series of four fat, satisfying novels, from his 1978 breakthrough The World According to Garp to 1989’s A Prayer for Owen Meany. Those were generous, funny, big-hearted books, tying characters he calls “outliers” to social issues from feminism to abortion.

Since Owen Meany, it’s been diminishing returns, except in page length. His last novel, 2022’s The Last Chairlift, was 900 pages of subjects Irving had explored better in earlier books (mutism, dwarfism, transgenderism), with a 200-page screenplay in the middle to pad it out – as if padding were needed.

This new addition to the Exhibition on Screen series features an alarmingly plausible-looking actor as the great man himself

The latest offering from the estimable Exhibition on Screen strand takes on one of the biggies – and with a title like that, it is also perhaps treading on other hallowed ground: that of Derek Jarman, whose 1986 biopic is arguably the most brilliant rendering of the great painter’s life and death. By contrast, this Caravaggio is a much more orthodox art-documentary treatment of its subject, playing to the strengths that the EoS films have built up over the years: beautifully crisp and detailed closeups of the work, well-informed and articulate talking-heads, and a nicely judged overall approach that is intelligent but not indigestible.

To be fair, this particular artist is well worked territory, so to spruce things up, the joint directors, David Bickerstaff and Phil Grabsky, cut in sequences with a monologuing actor, Jack Bannell, in character as Caravaggio. The aim is to fill in the void of the painter’s personality, of which, outside police and court reports, very little is known. Bannell certainly gives it his all and, tricked out in full beard and makeup effect facial wound, definitely looks the part – alarmingly so when the film cuts to a shot of David with the Head of Goliath, which gruesomely contains Caravaggio’s own features on the severed head. It’s not a totally successful device: there’s occasionally something of the one-man-fringe-play about it, but in its favour it gets across the trigger points in Caravaggio’s life, particularly the final few years when legal troubles forced him to regularly move, from Rome to Naples to Malta, and back again.

The tale of two strangers finding love ticks all the right boxes – including big-name support in Toni Collette and Andy Garcia – yet feels clunky and unconvincing

Anyone who thinks it’s easy to make a romcom should take a look at this. It has all the ingredients: good-looking leads (Alex Pettyfer, Eva De Dominici), picturesque locations (the film is mainly set in Puglia, and benefits from funding from the region), lightly comic music underlining the scenes, charismatic veterans in supporting roles (“with Toni Collette … and Andy Garcia”), transparently engineered third-act jeopardy, and so on and so forth. But like a failed soufflé on Bake Off, it never rises to the necessary level.

Pettyfer plays the hero, a romance novelist named Ian. (Yes, Ian. The sitcom Peep Show made great capital out of the ludicrousness of naming a baby Ian in the 21st century. Without wishing to do down the name, it’s an odd choice and speaks to a wider tone-deafness in the script.) In fact the plotline for Under the Stars is the inverse of, say, a great Richard Curtis one, in which implausible scenarios feel wholly realistic: there’s nothing particularly impossible about Under the Stars, and yet it all feels clunkily unlikely.

Mark Hampton wrote, directed and stars in this drama, but his easy onscreen charisma can’t overcome a shaky, soap opera-style plot

Financial traders in the movies are usually hubris personified, while boxers are a sure-fire vehicle for an underdog story. Writing, and playing, the role of reformed city fraudster turned pugilist Danny Goode, as well as directing the low-budget British drama that results, Mark Hampton sets up a potentially fertile collision of these two opposed elements. But cornering himself into an ultra-earnest tale of redemption, he lets his film absorb a few too many cheap cliche shots.

Danny is released after a three-year stretch for cooking the books; and, as a former high-rolling member of a late-night/early-morning gambling crew called the Breakfast Club, he now must accept diminished circumstances. This means a poky rental flat and, after his licence to trade is revoked, a restaurant job washing dishes arranged by an old friend, Jon (Mark Tunstall). His ex-wife, Chloe (Sarah Diamond), has the divorce papers ready to go, but Danny is keen to build bridges with his son, Ben (Artie Wong). He promises the kid a swanky holiday, so one more high-risk play is his only means of coming good: entering a £10,000 prize fight organised by local hardman Billy (Gary Davidson Jnr), who trains at Jon’s gym.

Set in a London council office, this clunky Christmas comedy interweaves a handful of storylines but musters only a brief flicker of cosy charm

Feelgood Christmas romcoms are like school nativity plays: you can forgive a lot in return for a toasty warm festive glow. The Secret Santa Project, based on a book by Tracy Bloom and set in a London council’s accounting department, manages a brief flicker of cosy charm in places but in truth it’s bit of a Christmas clunker.

Like Richard Curtis’s Love Actually this is a film with a handful of interwoven storylines. Samantha Giles plays Diane, the grinchy head of accounts who in the tradition of London romcoms walks to work over Westminster bridge past Big Ben; she would love to see Christmas cancelled and save the council a few pounds. Her husband Leon (Mark Williams) is a panto director, and Diane suspects he’s got a thing going on with Snow White. This plot line is not a million miles from Emma Thompson’s in Love Actually, but it bungles along to a clumsy resolution lacking the poignancy of Thompson slipping off to the bedroom for a cry on Christmas Day.

The Netflix film graphically highlights the importance mobiles bring to both work and home life, as well as their potential to wreak havoc on a global scale

Since its release, A House of Dynamite has triggered its own fallout over how accurately the film depicts the government’s immediate response to a nuclear attack of unknown origin. Could a missile fired from the Pacific really reach Chicago in just 18 minutes? Is the decision to retaliate solely in the president’s hands?

In particular, the Pentagon has challenged the film’s suggestion that US-launched interceptor missiles have only a 61% success rate at shooting down incoming intercontinental ballistic missiles, insisting that the real figure is 100% in testing. (The nonprofit Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation puts it even lower than the film, at 55%.)

The 88-year-old actor has appeared in more than 100 films, playing everyone from presidents to prisoners. Here, he reflects on AI’s ‘robbing’ of his voice, not believing in Black History Month – and why he’s nowhere near retirement

In a dishonest age when truth is under siege, media attention shatters into a thousand shards of glass and nothing is quite what it seems, what could be more precious than a voice of authority? Cue Morgan Freeman, an actor who has portrayed a US president, Nelson Mandela and the Almighty, and replaced Walter Cronkite on the voiceover introducing the CBS Evening News. If John Gielgud’s baritone was described as being “like a silver trumpet muffled in silk”, Freeman’s is like rich wood polished to a quiet shine.

It was less God’s gift than the product of hard work, thanks to an inspiring voice and diction instructor at his community college in Los Angeles. “If you’re going to speak, speak distinctly, hit your final consonants and do exercises to lower your voice,” says Freeman, dapper in light jacket , via video call from New York. “Most people’s voices are higher than they would be normally if they knew how to relax it. He taught that sort of thing. It was Robert Whitman: I will never forget him.”

At 79, the British artist is still skirting real peril, questing across the planet to depict the unspoiled vastnesses shown to grand effect here

Travelling with Tony Foster comes with a disclaimer. According to the terms of the contract signed by the British painter’s prospective companions: “You must have sufficient personal insurance for your body to be flown home in case of fatality.” Or, as he warns beforehand: “There will be times on this journey when you wish you were absolutely anywhere else.” Fortunately, there is an upside to Foster’s deep wilderness expeditions in search of the perfect vantage point for a watercolour. “There will also be times of great joy, when you experience things you never, ever would’ve dreamt of.”

Director David Schendel presumably signed in blood before hitching a raft ride with Foster on the Green River in Wyoming and Utah to make this engrossing docu-portrait. The 79-year-old – described by one longtime acquaintance as “two toothpicks in a potato” – is improbably hardy after more than 30 years of trekking: in the great American outdoors, Bolivia, Mount Everest, you name it. He needs to be: on one foray, it took him 16 days to locate the right spot. Once the easel is down, the self-taught artist makes luminous, airy panoramas with a jewel-like clarity. It doesn’t seem to be merely a question of imbuing a landscape with his personal feelings. The work, apparently, is meditative; it’s about what the landscape puts into him.

Soho theatre, London
The comedian considers his Brummie and Middle East identities in a polished set about belonging

British-Iraqi comedian Hasan Al-Habib’s eye-catching show is about coming from a part of the world blighted by poverty, danger and the world’s negative preconceptions. But that’s enough about Birmingham. There’s plenty more where that came from in Death to the West (Midlands), an adroit solo debut from the self-styled “amusing Arab”, the son of Middle Eastern incomers now addressing in standup his complex sense of belonging. The whole show balances his Brummie and his Iraqi identities, with reference to his stereotypical immigrant dad, his growing up during the second Iraq war, and – finally – visiting his so-called homeland as an adult.

It’s an extremely polished introduction to Al-Habib and his talents; perhaps a little too smooth and slickly engineered, wanting some grit in its machine. A factor in that may be its flirting-with-formulaic familiarity as a second-generation narrative. Which isn’t to doubt the truth and emotional significance to our host of the stories he tells of feeling shame at his Iraqi background when the country was at war with the UK and of trying to pass as white British to fit in. If any of this sounds tormented, it certainly isn’t in the telling: Al-Habib’s touch couldn’t be lighter as he cracks wise about Margaret Thatcher’s contraceptive value, Jack Grealish as a Brummie archetype, and how his father learned to love Jewish people.

At Soho theatre, London, until 15 November.

In his first hit play, now receiving another starry revival, the celebrated dramatist’s analysis of the American psyche is steeped in European tradition

The British theatre’s long love affair with Arthur Miller continues. This week sees the start of previews for Ivo van Hove’s production of Miller’s first Broadway hit, All My Sons, which has had half a dozen major revivals over the past five decades. Indeed, you could argue that Miller is more honoured here than at home. On his death it was said in the Times Literary Supplement: “He was mourned in England as a revered contemporary, in America as a figure from a bygone age.”

Why this division? One answer, supplied by All My Sons, is that Miller analysed the American psyche while being steeped in European tradition. It is difficult to discuss this particular play without giving away the plot. It is, however, an open secret that it hinges on the unproven accusation that Joe Keller, as a wartime manufacturer of aircraft engines, allowed faulty cylinder heads to be dispatched to the air force knowing they could endanger life.

St James Theatre, New York

The Wicked star reunites with composer Stephen Schwartz for a flashy yet exhausting adaptation of the acclaimed documentary

Like the US Capitol a century later, Versailles, that magnificent and ludicrously opulent monument to the French monarchy, was built on questionable grounds: marshland. Many in King Louis XIV’s circle side-eyed his decision to relocate the court to a swampy village miles outside Paris, site of a royal hunting lodge and great potential folly. But he did it anyway – the wetland drained, the sand imported, the running water laboriously engineered to support a palatial ode to absolute power.

The Queen of Versailles, a new Broadway original musical starring Kristin Chenoweth, rests on similarly shaky foundations. The show’s raison d’être is the reunion of Chenoweth, the diminutive diva who originated Broadway’s pre-eminent blonde (Glinda the Good Witch), with Wicked composer Stephen Schwartz. And for Chenoweth’s first lead Broadway role in a decade, the pair, along with author Lindsey Ferrentino, have selected a curious comeback vehicle: a shopaholic billionaire’s wife, proud builder of the largest private residence in America, unrepentant believer in the spoils of American capitalism.

Old Laundry theatre in Bowness-on-Windermere will change its name next year and premiere show to mark 10th anniversary of comedian’s death

A theatre in the Lake District is to be renamed for the comedian and playwright Victoria Wood and will stage a new musical using her songs to mark the 10th anniversary of her death.

The Old Laundry theatre is run by Wood’s friends, the married couple Charlotte Scott and Roger Glossop. Wood, who died from cancer aged 62 in 2016, was a trustee of the theatre in Bowness-on-Windermere and performed there many times, also directing a revival of her play Talent there in 2008. Scott and Glossop got to know her when they worked on Talent’s premiere at the Sheffield Crucible in 1978.

Her natural performance in Willy Russell’s masterpiece seemed effortless but Collins found it hugely challenging – and still made every day a party

Pauline Collins was a unique phenomenon: a superb light-comedy actress – as she described herself – who was unerringly able to reach emotional depths that reduced the stoniest-hearted of audiences to tears. She did this supremely, of course, in Willy Russell’s Shirley Valentine, the one-woman play in which I directed her in the West End and on Broadway. This performance was so natural, so deftly balanced between innate cheekiness and a devastating awareness that her life was about to pass her by, that many people assumed it was effortless.

On the contrary: she found it hugely challenging. Though she knew the play was a masterpiece, the prospect of doing it filled her with dread. Rehearsals were far from easy. The play is essentially a comic monologue and calls for very particular skills not possessed by all actors. I forced the poor woman to come into rehearsal every day and tell a new joke – torture for her, second nature to Shirley. Then there was the matter of getting her to credibly cook egg and chips while telling the story of her life. I knew she had to get all of that – the jokes and the chips – into her bones before she could stand before us as a three-dimensional person telling us deep truths about her life and the lives of millions of other women, all the while preparing the evening meal. As she struggled, Willy Russell began to have doubts about having cast her. “She’ll be fine,” he said, “but she won’t be Shirley.”

Ola Ince, who has refreshed Agatha Christie’s record-breaking mystery, says ‘we all fancy ourselves as detectives’

Audiences left hungry for more suspense after the nail-biting Celebrity Traitors finale should visit the ultimate murder mystery, The Mousetrap, its new director has suggested.

Ola Ince has taken charge of Agatha Christie’s indomitable whodunnit, the world’s longest-running play, which is in its 73rd year in London’s West End. The director, acclaimed for her bracing takes on Shakespeare, said Christie’s drama about a group of strangers snowed in at a remote guesthouse with a killer at large is “juicier” than she had previously imagined.

‘Prince’s Purple Rain guitar was in the corner of the studio and his lava lamps were everywhere. You couldn’t help but be inspired’

I was in a band in Hull called Akrylykz. When the Beat came to play at the Welly club we gave them a demo tape. Then they invited us to tour with them. Later, after they split up, Andy Cox and David Steele were looking for a singer for a new band and they remembered me. Fine Young Cannibals felt right straight away. After The Tube filmed us doing Johnny Come Home, we just took off. Then somebody must have noticed me on telly because suddenly I was getting film offers, and I appeared in Sammy and Rosie Get Laid and Scandal.

As the Jazz Cafe and Ronnie Scott’s expand, and Blue Note eyes its arrival, proprietors say there’s an energy in the scene – but financial pressures remain

As small gig venues around the country nervously eye their futures amid rising utility prices and a cost of living crisis, one corner of the live music scene seems to be thriving: London’s jazz clubs.

The Jazz Cafe is extending its Camden venue and opening an east London location, Ronnie Scott’s is being refurbished, and New York’s iconic Blue Note club, which has already spread to Japan, Brazil, Italy and China, will open its first London venue next year. And while financial pressures remain, a host of other, smaller venues are bringing in vibrant new audiences.

Accused of obscenity and sued by police and Tory MPs, Libertine outraged the establishment as part of Crass. Now she’s back – and she hasn’t mellowed with age

‘Things haven’t changed,” sighs Eve Libertine as she contemplates her new album. “All those songs are as relevant as they ever were.” The album in question, Live at the Horse Hospital, shows no sign that one of punk’s most anti-establishment figures is mellowing with age. Recorded at one blistering London live show in April 2024, Libertine collaborated with Chilean guitarist Eva Leblanc, reimagining tracks from Libertine’s back catalogue including ones from her time singing with 1970s anarcho-punk pioneers Crass. Produced by Crass founder Penny Rimbaud, it treads a path between performance art, experimental music and earth ritual; with her strident operatic tones, Libertine sounds like a soothsayer foretelling an apocalypse. It’s not an easy listen, but that was never the case with Crass, either.

“We never had much fun, to be honest,” Libertine says. “It was really heavy going at times. We were angry; we were trying to say things in a way that was confrontational and shocking to get a reaction. And we definitely did.”

The keyboard player on his heroin overdose, how Kurt Cobain wanted to be gay and why his memoir will ruin his Christian relatives’ Thanksgiving dinner

When Roddy Bottum began work on his remarkable autobiography The Royal We, the Faith No More keyboard-player knew exactly the book he didn’t want to write. “The kind that has pictures in the middle,” he says, via video-call from Oxnard, California, where he’s completing a new album by his group Imperial Teen. “I’m not a big fan of rock memoirs – they’re the most predictable, name-droppy, sub-literature experiences.”

The Royal We certainly isn’t name-droppy – Bottum doesn’t even use the surnames of his bandmates. And while he outlines the group’s origins and early development, this takes a back seat to his “youth escapades” in San Francisco, “before the internet, before that city got ruined”. Much of the focus is on his sexual awakening, and how the related secrecy and shame have affected his life. “I was having sex with men when I was very young, 13 or 14,” he says. “It was such a taboo, and that set the tone of my life.” In the memoir, episodes involving his cruising public toilets and parks as a teenager are recounted unflinchingly and unapologetically. “I had sex with older men in bushes,” he writes. “Shamefully at first, proudly later. Fuck off.”

With a towering new album about female saints in 13 languages, she’s pop’s boldest star – and one of its most controversial. She revisits her spiritual breakthroughs, and explains why we need forgiveness instead of cancel culture

Rosalía Vila Tobella is just as bored as you are of pop music functioning as gossip column fodder, with lyrics full of hints of rivalries and betrayal. “I’m tiring of seeing people referencing celebrities, and celebrities referencing other celebrities,” she says. “I’m really much more excited about saints.”

The 33-year-old Catalan musician and producer’s monumental fourth album, Lux, draws on the lives of dozens of female saints, inspired by “feminine mysticism, spirituality” and how lives of murder, materialism and rebellion could light the way to canonisation. Rosalía reels them off. Her gothic, operatic new single Berghain borrows from the 12th-century German abbess Hildegard of Bingen (cited like Madonna these days by experimental female musicians). “She had these visions that would pierce her brain. There’s also Vimala, who wrote poetry but was a prostitute, and she ended up becoming a saint because she was one of the first women who wrote in the Therīgāthā,” an ancient Buddhist poem collection written by nuns.

The former Verve singer talks about his supporting role in the big Oasis reunion shows, his AI fears and what he thinks of fans who Shazam his songs

Richard Ashcroft is the man of the moment. Fresh from supporting Oasis as the self-proclaimed “only man for the job”, the former Verve singer is back with an (almost) sold-out arena tour for 2026, and some more Oasis dates in South America, not to mention a seventh solo album, Lovin’ You. We caught up with Ashcroft to chat about loving Abba, being inspired by Serge Gainsbourg and fighting Liam Gallagher.

Hi, Richard! Always a pleasure to interview another Richard – who else is in the club?
Madeley … Hammond … It’s dying out. I wonder if it’s because of the Dick abbreviation? Back in the day, old actors were very happy being Dickie. I went into an off licence in Chiswick and this lad went: “All right, Dickie?” I said: “Do you know what happens to people who call me Dickie?” He said: “Oh no, sorry mate.” I said: “I’m only joking. I don’t give a shit. Call me what you want.”

Albert Hall, Manchester
The Chicago musician’s fans are delighted by her alt-R&B, but for all the adventurous new songs tonight’s show does not quite live up to its ambition

Chicago-born Ravyn Lenae has been a cult darling of alt-R&B since the mid-2010s, an art-school dreamer whose whimsical, pop-tinged sound first drew notice when indie-slacker wunderkind Steve Lacy produced her Crush EP back in 2018. Tonight in Manchester, her kooky on-stage persona is mirrored by a surprisingly baby-faced group of misfits pressed against the barrier: a sea of trend-conscious twentysomethings in slouchy cargos and Y2K outfits desperate for a chance to brush against the singer’s hand. Supported by a guitarist, drummer and backing track, Lenae twirls on to the stage with the groove-heavy Sticky, and a lone wind machine whooshes her curls into the air.

Some songs from her 2024 album Bird’s Eye land on eager ears. The new material takes a sweet yet sharp turn from her earlier work, bouncing from the fun, rocksteady dubby speaker rattles in Candy to the tender, heart-on-chest ballad Love Is Blind. She airs her ruptured romantic frustrations in plaintive pleas: “How do you love me if you leave me behind?” But feels such as the slower, sad-girl moments on the new record, including Pilot, struggle to maintain the same momentum. Her recent melancholy undoubtedly means a great deal to her: Lenae punctuates the set with warm reflections on her own growth as an artist and offers a healthy, relatable dose of sisterly love and guidance: “Stay the course. Time is a gift.”

Wigmore Hall, London
In a deftly curated programme, youthful compositions rubbed shoulders with music from her most productive period, the 1920s

Among the plethora of female composers finally receiving their due in recent years, Rebecca Clarke stands out for sheer quality and consistency of inspiration. Born in 1886, she studied with Stanford, worked with Vaughan Williams and, as a virtuoso violist, became one of the first professional female orchestral players in London. Relocating to the United States, her output declined, but her spirited chamber music and more recently her rediscovered songs, have proved fertile ground for today’s performers.

In a deftly curated programme, the culmination of a Wigmore Hall Clarke study day, youthful compositions rubbed shoulders with music from her most productive period, the 1920s. Ailish Tynan opened proceedings, her soaring soprano and snappy diction illuminating songs that suggested the influence of Vaughan Williams. Ravel, in Orientalist mode, hovered over settings of Chinese poetry, perfect material for Kitty Whately’s fresh, flaming mezzo-soprano with its cushioned lower register. Ashley Riches’ warm baritone embraced Clarke’s memorable melody for Yeats’ Down by the Salley Gardens while raising a smile in The Aspidistra, a melodramatic song about the calculated murder of a pot plant.

Fröst/Nordberg/Kobekina/Dubé/Andersson
(Sony)
The virtuosic musician’s effortless phrasing and imaginative collaborations make this collection short but sweet

Perhaps every musician worth their salt turns to JS Bach sooner or later. The German composer was dead before the clarinet as we know it today was established, but Martin Fröst, his playing as silkily eloquent as ever, makes the short but sweet selection on this recording very much his own.

There’s an intimate feel to the whole thing, which was recorded at Fröst’s studio in the Swedish countryside, with the fellow musicians sleeping over. The tone is set by the aria from the Goldberg Variations, with a hint of a jazz sensibility thanks to Sebastián Dubé’s bass, Fröst’s melody seamless on top. Fröst duets with his viola player brother Göran on two Inventions, and with himself, double-tracked, on the G major Sinfonia; fair enough, few others would be able to keep up. Yet though this is lightning fast, it still holds to the quiet, unassuming mood.

St Paul’s Cathedral, London
The composer conducted two of his own choral works – one a world premiere, alongside a majestic performance of Vaughan Williams’ fifth symphony in a polished and enjoyable evening

He is a virtuoso of the jaunty rhythm and the doyen of the singable tune. He has a way with suspensions – crunchy enough for resolution to break through like sunlight, but strictly PG-rated compared with the harmonic adventures of his contemporaries. His music is as unfashionably essential as a five-pack of M&S briefs, as ineffably English as queueing.

From two royal weddings and a coronation to choir rehearsals, school assemblies and carol services across the UK and North America, British composer John Rutter has dominated the anglophone choral scene for six decades. At 80, he is in a league of his own: a niche national treasure, even referred to as “the composer who owns Christmas”.

As she prepares to star in Janáček’s The Makropulos Case for the Royal Opera, the great singer explains that she does not play ‘the happy, jumping, sexy lady’

Ausrine Stundyte has been in the room for just over two minutes when she looks me in the eye and declares: “I am totally not a feminist.” I am slightly taken aback. Moments earlier, I had been watching the Lithuanian soprano rehearse Leoš Janáček’s opera The Makropulos Case, which the Royal Opera is staging for the first time this autumn, in a new production by Katie Mitchell. Stundyte takes the work’s central role – and Mitchell is a director famous for her explicitly feminist approach.

Stundyte, it turns out, has also surprised herself. A few days after we speak, she emails a clarification: she isn’t against women’s rights. But it bothers her, she explains, when “women see men as the problem and themselves as victims. When you put yourself in the role of a victim, you give away your own power.”

The Fortnite tie-in is only the latest in a longstanding relationship between The Simpsons and video games, showing how the hit sitcom has survived as a cultural icon

And so Fortnite has done it again. Over the past five years, developer Epic Games maintained the relevance and awareness of its ageing online shooter by churning out pop culture collaborations, from Marvel to John Wick to Sabrina Carpenter. For limited periods, players get to take part in the game as their favourite movie characters and music artists, an arrangement that provides refreshed audience numbers for the game – and a tidy revenue stream for the brands.

Now it’s the turn of The Simpsons. This month, the Fortnite island has become a miniature Springfield, complete with popular characters and well-known locations. If you want to play as Homer and shoot up Moe’s Tavern, you can. If you want to take Bart to Kwik-E-Mart for a squishee, go ahead. Everywhere you look there’s a fun little Simpsons Easter egg, from the fact that the Battlebus (which delivers players on to the island) is now driven by Otto to the presence of Duffman, Seymour Skinner’s steamed hams and drooling aliens.

Sports Interactive; PC (version tested), PS5, Switch, Xbox
After a two-year wait, Football Manager 26 upgrades every aspect of the football sim, but it may take some getting used to

You can imagine what the home fans are singing in the Stadium of Light: “Top of the league, you’re having a laugh!” Your Liverpool team, who until this afternoon were five points clear at the top of the table, trail by two goals in the 82nd minute. You wonder where Mo Salah left his shooting boots, or why Virgil van Dijk seems to have forgotten the whole concept of tackling. But this isn’t on the players, it’s on you – or so you’ll tell the press – as you stare at the tactics screen trying to figure out which of the dozens of potential tweaks will change the tide of this depressing spectacle.

Football Manager was always the data-driven alternative to the visually opulent Fifa series (now EA Sports FC), but the latest instalment starts to bridge the graphical gap. The 3D-rendered match highlights have been given an upgrade via the new Unity engine, and the results are impressive. Premier League derbies, Champions League finals, and even away matches in the north-east have visual gravitas now, even if the replays and so-called important moments often overstay their welcome. There are no Fifa-style authentic chants ringing around the stadia, but the atmosphere is palpable and your imagination fills in the blanks.

It may look like an unnecessary sequel, but even as someone who played the original cleaning game for a record-setting 24 hours straight, I’m hooked all over again

Does the world really need another PowerWash Simulator game? No, some will say. Probably people who have never played the original and don’t understand the appeal, but like to tilt their head with a mixture of bemusement and condescension and say: “So what do you do in the game? Just wash things?”

(It feels unfair that other pastimes don’t have to justify themselves like this. No one ever says, “Wait, you just run around the park in a circle for five kilometres?” Or, “So you just kick the ball with your foot?”)

In our always online, AI-imperilled lives, simply looking at a painting can improve wellbeing and offer creative guidance. For my new book, artists and writers shared their advice on how to live life artfully

How many times a day do you reach for your phone? Do you jump at a notification, spend journeys locked in on your tiny black mirror? What about during meals, or when you wake up? Does it make you feel enriched, alive? I am just as guilty as the next person: swiping, liking, scrolling. But in a world built to distract us, how can we take five or 10 minutes away from that, and instead add something enriching to our lives?

I like to look at artists for the answers. They get us to slow down and think about different ways of looking; to notice nature and beauty; time changing in front of us. They remind us of the joys of making, and in a world where AI is attempting to outsource our creativity to machines – the delight of discovering something for ourselves. Artists see the potential in something: like a word that can be joined up into a sentence that can grow into a paragraph, or book; or a tube of paint that can be used to create an image. Not only can these get us to see something from a different perspective, or teach us something about their world, but hold our attention, and invite stillness, too.

It may be a midlife crisis, says the man behind seven-metre installations of the Earth, moon and Sun who has planted 365 trees in a 100-year project in Somerset

Luke Jerram, whose art installations have travelled the world, is philosophical about his latest project bearing fruit beyond his time on Earth.

Known for his Play Me I’m Yours street pianos project and his Museum of the Moon artwork – a seven-metre diameter sculpture of the moon featuring detailed Nasa imagery of the lunar surface – Jerram is now working on Echo Wood, a living, breathing installation made of native British trees.

David Zwirner Gallery, London
From cruel pictures of elderly widows to a shocking image of motherhood, the American photographer’s genius is on full display in a show that finds ugliness all around her

In 1971, at the age of 48, the American photographer Diane Arbus killed herself. Someone should have seen the clues, for her photography is not so much tragic as utterly alienated from the human species. Here is a woman nursing her baby, a modern Madonna – except the woman’s limbs are as thin as an addict’s, her face wizened and the infant resting in her arms, dressed in baby clothes, is a monkey. Just to make clear that this is an absurd, miserable travesty of Madonnas and motherhood Arbus captioned it: “A woman with her baby monkey, NJ, 1971.” It is an utterly pitiable image of desperation, of someone trying to make sense of a life that can’t be made sense of. And the despair mirrors that of Arbus herself.

You might want to see her many images of gender-blurring positively. There’s a photograph called Transvestite at Her Birthday Party, NYC 1969: she lies on her bed laughing, double chinned and gap-toothed in a blond wig, in a shabby hotel room with balloons. But Arbus actually said how macabre and pathetic she found the occasion: “She called me up and said it was her birthday party and would I come and I said, ‘How terrific.’ It was a hotel on Broadway and 100th Street … I’ve been in some pretty awful places but the lobby was really like hades.” The elevator was broken so Arbus walked up to the fourth floor. “You had to step over about three or four people every flight. And then I came into her room. The birthday party was me and her, a whore friend of hers and her pimp, and the cake.”

National Gallery, London
Joseph Wright of Derby’s vivid paintings depicted Enlightenment thinking and illumination amid the dark. So why are they so terrifying?

He looks like he’s up to no good. In the depths of the night, under trees and clouds turned silver and black by the full moon, a man is at work with a shovel. Is he burying a body or digging bits up for a Frankensteinian experiment? After all, this painting was done by Joseph Wright of Derby, a friend of pioneering scientists and industrialists in the Lunar Society of Birmingham, leaders of the new science that would inspire Mary Shelley.

But the man beside the foaming river Derwent is not collecting body parts. He’s doing something just as nefarious by 21st-century moral standards: blocking a fox den so the foxes can’t get back in and will be easy game for the hunt tomorrow. Maybe Wright shares my compassion for foxes, because An Earthstopper on the Banks of the Derwent genuinely is a bit sinister. Yet it has a hypnotic beauty. Two light sources – a lantern and the moon – make this night anything but dead as we almost hear leaves rustle, white water rush and the earthstopper’s spade clunk. It’s one thing to paint a landscape by day. Wright makes one come fantastically alive by night.

Dulwich Picture Gallery, London
A solo exhibition devoted to the Danish painter who lived and worked in Skagen, a remote tip of northern Denmark, reveals her to be an artist of tenderness and vision

Walking into the Anna Ancher exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery feels like walking into a pat of butter, or, perhaps, more aptly, a ray of sunlight. The luscious pale yellow walls of the first two galleries immediately immerse you in what Ancher is most known for: her remarkably radical practice of painting light.

Ancher was born Anna Brøndum in 1859 and raised in Skagen, a wild region at the northern tip of Denmark known for its windswept beaches, ethereal light and wild seas. The area became a destination for artists in the late 19th century, one of whom, Michael Ancher, became Anna’s husband. Her exposure to working artists from her early teenage years put her on the path to becoming an artist herself, something that her parents and future husband both, unusually, unequivocally supported. She became part of what was eventually known as the Skagen Painters; as the only member who was actually from Skagen, her work had a depth of connection to place unmatched by her peers.

From cultivating a spiral-shaped orchard to finding lost glaciers and dressing up as a landmark bird, on 4 November artists around the UK will participate in Remember Nature, a day of activism to offer hope for the future

Back in 2015, well into the twilight of his life, the artist and activist Gustav Metzger decided to embark on one last big project. Best known as the inventor of auto-destructive art – a response, he said, to the destructive horrors of the Holocaust – Metzger had also, over the course of a long career, been an inspirational teacher to Pete Townshend of the Who and campaigned for numerous causes including nuclear disarmament and vegetarianism. Now, on a video message barely three minutes long, he was making one final plea.

“I, Gustav Metzger, am asking for your participation in this worldwide call for a day of action to remember nature on November 4th, 2015,” he began, appealing to creatives to take a stand against the ongoing erasure of species. “Our task is to remind people of the richness and complexity in nature … and by doing so art will enter territories that are inherently creative.”

The former First Lady hosts an absorbing new show about her fashion evolution. Plus, Katy Davis explores ‘waiting’ – whether it’s for a bus or an imprisoned lover

Margot Robbie’s company to make movie based on Northern Ireland academics’ stories of poverty and prison

It started as a trawl of dusty archives for an academic project about female Irish emigrants in Canada and the US by two history professors, a worthy but perhaps niche topic for research.

The subjects, after all, were human flotsam from Ireland’s diaspora whose existence was often barely recorded, let alone remembered.

When Nicola Thorp was growing up in Blackpool, the ‘kebab girl’ who had gone missing less than a mile away, aged 14, was spoken of as a cautionary tale. But what really happened to her? For the last three years, Thorp has been finding out

It has been more than 20 years since 14-year-old Charlene Downes went missing in Blackpool. Last captured on CCTV on a Saturday night in November 2003, Charlene still hasn’t been found, and the truth of what happened to her remains unsolved. Nicola Thorp, an actor, writer and broadcaster, who grew up in the town, describes Charlene’s disappearance, considered to be murder, as “a wound for Blackpool”. Over the last couple of decades, the case has been clouded by rumour, far-right rhetoric and police failures. In a new podcast, Charlene: Somebody Knows Something, she has set out to clear up some of the speculation, and expose how Charlene was repeatedly failed by those around her.

Many in the town, she says, still believe the two men who were first tried in 2007 – a retrial was ordered, which then collapsed amid “grave doubts” about the evidence – got away with murder. That in itself, she says, is an obstacle to finding out who is really responsible.