>
Category

Culture

The latest published reporting in this category.

Entertainment

Bronze leg found in Scottish bog sheds new light on Roman occupation

Once thought to have been looted by Scottish tribes, the gilded limb is the centrepiece of a new exhibition on Roman Scotland in Edinburgh A large bronze leg found in a bog in rural Scotland more than 200 years ago and then hidden away in a duke’s storeroom is helping to rewrite the history of the Roman empire. Antiquarians argued that the so-called Mislington leg had been looted, perhaps from York, hacked off by marauding Scottish tribes and carried north over Hadrian’s Wall. “We cannot visualise the conditions which would have led to its erection anywhere north of the Great Wall,” said one s

The Guardian
Read more
Entertainment

Veteran actor Irma P Hall, star of The Ladykillers, dies aged 91

Once a Dallas school teacher, Hall became a star in later life with roles in Soul Food and Collateral Actor Irma P Hall, star of Soul Food and the Coen brothers’ The Ladykillers, has died at the age of 91. Hall died on Tuesday, her family confirmed alongside a statement that described her as “a beloved actress, author, poet, educator and public speaker whose contributions touched countless lives throughout her remarkable career”. Continue reading...

The Guardian
Read more
Entertainment

‘Young, Black and female in Brixton is hard’: ​from football to Top Boy and wordplay, the inspiring journey of UK rapper Cristale

Crystal Palace FC or Oxbridge beckoned, but the multitalented MC kept forging her way towards music. She explains how she poured every aspect of herself into her debut mixtape Two weeks before we meet, UK rapper Cristale was scrambling down a cliff face to a secluded black pebbled beach in Dover, racing an incoming tide with fewer than 90 minutes to shoot the video for her single I’m Okay With Being Lonely. She’d never hiked before in her life. “I was wearing head-to-toe Stone Island, no hiking gear, full face of makeup, edges laid and Mum was doing my touch-ups on a rusty ladder,” she laughs.

The Guardian
Read more
Science

The space rocket I could have been aboard explodes: Rhiannon Adam’s best photograph

‘I was chosen to go around the Moon on a SpaceX starship. Preparations took over my life. Then, four minutes into watching a rocket on a test flight, it broke apart. And that was the end of my adventure’ This photograph was taken on 20 April 2023 from the VIP section of SpaceX’s launch viewing area, looking out from South Padre Island, Texas, towards Boca Chica, a nature reserve near the Mexican border which is home to SpaceX’s Starbase launchpad. In 2021, I and seven other civilians were selected from an open call to go around the Moon on a free SpaceX Starship flight funded by the Japanese b

The Guardian
Read more
Entertainment

David Walliams cameo cut from Australian film after sexual harassment allegations

Children’s author and comedian, who wrote the book on which the movie Fing! is based, will also be removed from the publicity tour Revealed: David Walliams accused of using celebrity status to prey on young women for sex What are the key legal issues surrounding the David Walliams case? The distributors of an upcoming Australian film based on a book by children’s author and television personality David Walliams have confirmed he will be removed from the film and its publicity run after sexual harassment allegations were made public. Transmission Films has confirmed that Walliams, a co-writer o

The Guardian
Read more
Entertainment

Dua Lipa, Tame Impala and SZA set to headline Coachella 2027

The California festival has unveiled its lineup, which also features Madonna, Phoebe Bridgers and Robyn The lineup for the 2027 Coachella festival has been revealed after months of speculation, with Dua Lipa, SZA and Tame Impala set to headline the California event. The festival will also see Madonna headlining the dance tent with Zara Larsson, Robyn, Phoebe Bridgers, Weezer and Daddy Yankee set to perform. The festival will take place in the Empire Polo Club in Indio on 9-11 April and 16-18 April. Continue reading...

The Guardian
Read more
International

How years of research built Grand Theft Auto VI’s obsessively detailed world

The developers behind its virtual Florida share how they built their most ambitious world so far • Don’t get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up here In 2015, a group of Grand Theft Auto developers from Rockstar North took their first trips to Miami to do field research for the next game in the phenomenally popular crime series. “Before you’re doing hyper-organised research trips, you’re immersing yourself in the place and its history, the vibe of it,” Rob Nelson, one of the lead developers on GTA VI, tells me. “[You see] the physical places you want to move characters through, th

The Guardian
Read more
Entertainment

Caryl Churchill’s magnificent Cloud 9 reaches for the skies – the National Theatre has done it proud

National Theatre, London The experimental 1979 drama gleefully muddles roles in a century-spanning caper that bounces from colonial Africa to hippy London Caryl Churchill’s time-hopping 1979 drama is not revived as often as it might be, perhaps because it is so magnificently madcap. Bouncing from a first act satirising Victorian life in colonial Africa to a second act exploring sexual liberation in 1970s London, it could easily roll off-kilter in the wrong hands. There is also its complicated framework. Cloud 9 is a play in two distinct parts which follows some of the characters a century on,

The Guardian
Read more
Entertainment

‘Like having your brain squeezed’: Succession’s Jesse Armstrong and more on the rollercoaster of TV writers’ rooms

As co-writer of new thriller Hunting Alice Bell, our film critic entered the hallowed Room – and was struck by its support, buzz, abrasion and chocolate snacks. He asks legendary showrunners about their experience ‘Write, write, write until your fingers break!” That was Chekhov’s advice to writers. Until I started writing for television I thought I understood what he meant. I thought I knew what writing was: the solitude, the making yourself do it, the finger-shattering pain of doing it seriously, on your own. As well as being chief film critic for the Guardian, I have written fiction and in s

The Guardian
Read more
Entertainment

Prima Facie review – Cynthia Erivo’s brilliant barrister blazes in sexual assault drama

Adaptation of the international stage hit stars a commanding Erivo as Tessa, whose career defending rape suspects is undermined by experience A blazingly fierce, effortlessly commanding central performance from Cynthia Erivo, like something from classical drama, powers this movie adaptation of Suzie Miller’s international stage hit (which starred Sheridan Harbridge in the original Australian production, and then Jodie Comer in London’s West End). Miller has written the screenplay, with Susanna White directing. In the theatre, it is a bravura solo spectacle, a stream-of-consciousness torrent wh

The Guardian
Read more