This time there aren’t any vaginas involved. I say that because half the time Gwyneth Paltrow is in the news it’s vagina-related. On this occasion, however, it’s because a lot of people are seemingly annoyed that she – a woman who has amassed a fortu

Ed Sheeran has said that following the deaths of friends SBTV founder Jamal Edwards and the Australian cricketer Shane Warne in 2022, he “didn’t want to live any more”. Speaking to Rolling Stone magazine ahead of the release of his sixth album, – (Su

Twenty years ago, Paris Hilton was the stiletto-heeled embodiment of the zeitgeist. With a chihuahua called Diamond Baby kennelled in her designer handbag, this nepotistic partygoer juggled five mobile phones while cantering across continents to sell

There wasn’t love but there was what love becomes —(sheet-wrinkle.) (skin-dune.) (Arm-ropes lassoingour neck-flesh with push-and-pull —, equal amounts;the hurt convincing its shape is false, the relation:the recorded moment (he likes to record) (to r

Welcome to the boardroom, but beware the flying F-bombs. As the fourth (and tragically final) season approaches, we ask five business insiders how true to life the super-rich saga is. Mike Soutar is a former newspaper and magazine CEO. He’s now a me

Professor Mary Beard associates the restaurant Moro, in London’s Clerkenwell, with afternoons of flowing wine and pats on the back. It’s where her publisher takes her to celebrate when she has delivered a book manuscript. She’s nearing such a deadlin

Before The Great British Bake Off, I never thought to bake a cake in four hours or do something that elaborate. It’s so surprising how the stress and desperation pushes you. I’d call it a human instinct to survive: no matter what I do, I have to serv

Richard Milward, 38, grew up in Middlesbrough and lives in London. He is the author of three previous novels: Apples, published when he was 22; Ten Storey Love Song, told in the form of a single 300-page paragraph; and Kimberly’s Capital Punishment (

No need for more scare stories about the looming automation of the future. Artists, designers, photographers, authors, actors and musicians see little humour left in jokes about AI programs that will one day do their job for less money. That dark daw

A letter from Jane Austen to her sister, in which she shares domestic news and neighbourhood gossip, is to go on display at the author’s former home. Dated 1798, the letter is one of around 160 by Austen that survive, and one of the earliest in exist

More straight-ahead funk than the albums that had made his name, High on You is nevertheless the last Sly Stone album that anyone but an obsessive might want to listen to all the way through. The best track is Crossword Puzzle – its tight groove subs

Pressure to look macho led a young Bono to hide his love of Abba, the U2 singer has said. He said he lacked the courage to own up to liking the Swedish pop group at a time when his contemporaries were listening to punk, but was now able to see that h

High up on the wall in the first room of the Tate Modern’s blockbuster Cézanne exhibition, there was a quote from the revered postimpressionist: “With an apple, I shall astonish Paris.” To which, surely, the only response is: “OK mate. Nobody has eve

For the past six weeks, Miley Cyrus’s Flowers, the most dominant song on the Billboard charts, was decently ubiquitous, as much as one can determine song ubiquity in my particular bubble of Brooklyn. I heard it in Ubers, at the nail salon, during at

When I was recovering at home after a brief stint in hospital in 2021, I spent weeks watching British crime dramas. I became adept at telling the red-herrings from the genuine clues, and the wrong ’uns from the unfairly accused. I didn’t care that th

You know a game is important when even the release of a short playable demo is the most exciting, talked about event of the week. I am of course referring to the Resident Evil 4 remake, a 20-minute slice of which was made available for free on PlaySt

After the unlikely success of Everything Everywhere All at Once at this year’s Oscars ceremony (a film that wasn’t viewed as a contender pre-release, premiering at the fanboy-led SXSW film festival and seen on paper as too genre to be Academy fodder)

In March 2000, three weeks before the 72nd Academy Awards, that year’s entire shipment of Oscars – 55 individually marked, 24-carat-gold-plated statuettes – mysteriously disappeared en route from the manufacturer in Chicago to Los Angeles. The story

When Glen “Spot” Lockett pointed his camera at something, he intended to capture what was there, not what he wanted you to see. “I paid attention to my subjects and what they were doing,” he told Vice in 2014 while discussing Sounds of Two Eyes Openi

Leonardo da Vinci comments in his notebooks that while few are trained in judging portraits, everyone feels entitled to criticise actual people: “whether someone is a hunchback (gobbo), or has one shoulder higher or lower than the other, or too big a

For the past 10 days, reality TV fans have been gripped by a scandal that is equal parts vile and delightful. Two cast members of the show Vanderpump Rules – Tom Sandoval and Ariana Madix, who have been together for almost a decade – split after Madi

‘Do you know what terpenes are?” says our glamorous host, pointing to four glass domes spotlit on a table, each containing mysterious lumps of black rock. The surrounding walls of this small room in Los Angeles are lined with mirrors, topped with neo

The first time I understood quite how bad emergency relief can be was in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami in December 2004. From the dockside, first responders fed back stories of containers full of pots and pans with broken handles, soiled

I met Angela Carter in 1982, while we were in Dublin attending a week celebrating the centenary of James Joyce’s birth. She’d written a script based on a short story of hers called The Company of Wolves, itself an adaptation of Little Red Riding Hood

It’s two hours before the Oscars begin, and I am running barefoot down the sidewalk a block from the Dolby theatre in Los Angeles. In the multiverse of ways my first trip to the Academy Awards could’ve played out, there was a version where I remember

It says a lot about the state of the Oscars in general that, on a night when a bear on cocaine attacked the noted activist Malala Yousafzai in her seat on live television, last night’s ceremony went down as one of the most incident-free of recent yea

Four hundred years ago, a small band of William Shakespeare’s loyal friends and fellow thespians embarked on the complicated challenge of bringing his complete works together in one bound volume. Whether it was an act of love and respect or a money-m

When I watched The Staircase, I was transfixed. The 2004 documentary series – rereleased on Netflix in 2018 – tells the story of US author Michael Peterson, who was charged with the murder of his wife. I was glued to my laptop, Googling the myriad of

Margaret Atwood is the author of more than 50 books of fiction, poetry and essays. Her novels include Cat’s Eye, The Robber Bride, Alias Grace and The Blind Assassin. Her 1985 classic, The Handmaid’s Tale, was followed in 2019 by a sequel, The Testam

In every argument, debate or article about the rise of the modern celebrity, one name always reappears: Andy Warhol. Do you know who first documented the minutiae of their life? Andy Warhol. Do you know who coined the phrase “In the future everyone w