The UK’s 2023 Women’s Prize has been awarded to Barbara Kingsolver for Demon Copperhead, her retelling of Dickens’ David Copperfield set in modern-day Appalachia. She is the first author to win the prize twice, after winning in 2010 for The Lacuna. Kingsolver also received the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for fiction for Demon Copperhead. She was … Continue reading “What the Dickens? 2023 Women’s Prize Winner”
If you are in or near Brest in the next couple of weeks, don’t miss this free exhibition of 280 works by mysterious street artist Banksy! It’s at the Ateliers des Capucins from 10 to 25 June. The works are from the personal collection of François Bérardino, a French actor who met a graffiti artist … Continue reading “Banksy in Brest”
Tim Burton has a quirky vision of the world and his films like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Alice in Wonderland and the TV series Wednesday are full of intriguing visual details. A new exhibition invites visitors into his visual world. Rather than going through the looking glass, visitors plunge into a labyrinth that ensures … Continue reading “Welcome to Tim Burton’s World”
Jim Broadbent was amazing in The Duke last year, playing a man who took a valuable painting ransom to try to obtain free TV licences for British pensioners. Now he’s back as an equally eccentric Englishman, Harold Fry, who leaves his house to send a letter to a friend he has heard is dying and … Continue reading “I Would Walk Five Hundred Miles”
Two exhibitions in Paris celebrate the life and legend of the first African-American artist to become an international star. Jean-Michel Basquiat, an African-American artist of Haitian and Puerto Rican descent, was born in New York in 1960. He began spray painting graffiti slogans on walls and doorways in the city’s Lower East Side in 1979. … Continue reading “Exhibitions: Jean-Michel Basquiat, Music and Warhol”
A new exhibition gives a fascinating insight into the songlines which are a fundamental part of Indigenous Australian culture. These creation stories also function as oral maps to practical places such as waterholes and to sacred sites. The exhibition at Quai Branly was curated by Indigenous Australian Elders, who traditionally preserve and pass on the … Continue reading “Songlines: Australian Aboriginal Culture”
Magnum photographer Elliott Erwitt has been taking photos for 80 years and the retrospective exhibition he curated himself at the Musée Maillol in Paris is a rich record of his home country of the U.S.A. and all those he has visited, the people who fascinate him and a lot of dogs! Erwitt was born in … Continue reading “Elliott Erwitt: A Life in Photos”
From April to October, in Paris, Harry Potter: The Exhibition will explore behind the scenes of the Harry Potter saga and the World of Wizards. Visitors will discover mythical scenes of the Harry Potter World as a whole, including the seven books and eight films of the first saga, the the Fantastic Beasts films, and … Continue reading “Magical Behind-the-Scenes”
Emily Brontë was one of the most extraordinary group of siblings in British literature. Although she wrote just one novel, Wuthering Heights, it has resonated across the world since 1847. A new biopic tries to imagine how Emily got inspiration for her Romantic classic. Emma Mackey (Eiffel, Death on the Nile) embodies the fierce, shy … Continue reading “Emily Brontë Biopic”
When 14-year-old Emmett Till was lynched in Mississippi in 1955, he could have just have been another statistic in the segregated South under Jim Crow. But his mother decided the world would be made to see what her son had suffered and her actions galvanised the Civil Rights movement. A new film, 18 years in … Continue reading “Telling the Story of Emmett Till”
