Culture | The Observer

Art

Inside the mind of Paula Rego

The late, great Anglo-Portuguese artist’s son Nick Willing is preserving her legacy – and her cast of grotesques. He shows us his mother’s idiosyncratic studio

By Vanessa Thorpe

For today

Interviews

Tim Adams

James Graham: ‘I just thought, my god, this story has to get made’

The playwright on the ‘extraordinary forgiveness’ behind his play Punch

Books

Anthony Cummins

Gwendoline Riley: ‘My writing is pure instinct’

The writer on her new novel and her lifelong quest to write the ‘one true book’

Interviews

Sarah Crompton

Linda Tolhurst’s tales from the National Theatre stage door

Olivier award winner Linda Tolhurst’s tales from the National Theatre stage door

Photography

Sean O’Hagan

‘Everyone at the Chelsea wanted to be a star’

Long lost photographs capture the vagabonds and eccentrics at Manhattan’s Chelsea Hotel at the start of their creative journeys

Features

Zoë Hitzig: ‘AI is gambling with people’s minds’

Interviews

Melissa Denes

Zoë Hitzig: ‘AI is gambling with people’s minds’

Rebecca Solnit: ‘The runaway car has to hit a wall one of these days’

Interviews

Erica Wagner

Rebecca Solnit: ‘The runaway car has to hit a wall one of these days’

Kneecap: ‘Nobody actually thinks we’re terrorists. It’s a carnival of distraction’

Interviews

Miranda Sawyer

Kneecap: ‘Nobody actually thinks we’re terrorists. It’s a carnival of distraction’

Interviews

Barbara Ellen

Rachel Reid: Why I wrote Heated Rivalry

The big picture

On the border with Israel

Rania Matar’s photograph of a Lebanese woman is revealing due to what it keeps hidden

The critics

Architecture

Rowan Moore

Behind the scenes of Theatr Clwyd’s £38m makeover

Long a source of local pride, the Mold theatre becomes a monument of culture designed with access, diversity and festivity in mind

Classical

Fiona Maddocks

The sounds of the Sistine Chapel

Classical music’s best and brightest gathered to hear the first concert premiere ever held beneath Michelangelo’s frescoes

Art

Laura Cumming

Hurvin Anderson at Tate Britain – vivid memories of home

The painter fuses recollections of post-Windrush life in the Midlands with the lush Caribbean homeland he never knew

Dance

Sarah Crompton

English National Ballet’s Body & Soul is a game of two halves

An ill-judged work by Kameron N Saunders opens a double bill redeemed in the second section

More critics

Pop

Kitty Empire

Geese are the hottest band in the world

Self Esteem lights up David Hare’s Teeth ‘n’ Smiles

Theatre

Katherine Cowles

Self Esteem lights up David Hare’s Teeth ‘n’ Smiles

Two Prosecutors is a chilling study of Stalin’s red tape terror

Film

Wendy Ide

Two Prosecutors is a chilling study of Stalin’s red tape terror

Film

Wendy Ide

Wendy Ide’s pick of other films: Splitsville, DJ Ahmet, Below the Clouds and more

We Have Notes

SNL UK has arrived and BTS are back!

A British version of the hit sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live debuted last weekend, but how did this historic moment come about? And BTS, the biggest boy band in the world, are back with a new album 82-date tour. Their four year hiatus is over but how did seven young Korean men become an international sensation?

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