The Guardian

(In+Out) As saxophonist and band leader Marshall Allen turns 100, his evergreen outfit effortlessly draw on their rich history, as classics meet the cosmic One way to celebrate your 100th birthday is with a new album, which is Marshall Allen’s response to his centenary. A distinctive and often wild alto saxophonist, Allen has dedicated his creative life to the Arkestra , the group founded by “cos…

The Travis musician on William Eggleston’s unseen photographs, a superhero show worth watching, and where he likes to eat and drink on the US’s east and west coasts Fran Healy was born in Stafford in 1973 and raised in Glasgow. He studied at the Glasgow School of Art where he joined the band Travis (originally known as Glass Onion), becoming their singer and principal songwriter. They released th…

Adams plays a struggling mother who starts to turn into a dog in Marielle Heller’s uneven adaptation of Rachel Yoder’s bestseller Motherhood, according to Amy Adams’s frazzled, unnamed mum to a toddler in Marielle Heller’s Nightbitch , “is perhaps the most violent experience a human can have aside from death itself”. It’s feral, primal and animalistic, an experience that strips away our fastidiou…

The actor, 84, talks about memories of the Blitz, surviving through humour, the inspiration of Ronnie Barker and being knighted by the Queen Near the end of the Second World War, I must have been about four, and we were in a canvas shelter in my house with my mother and father. The bombs were dropping and I was getting frightened and my mother cuddled me and said: “It’s all right, don’t worry, it…

Islington Assembly Hall, London Celebrating the 20th anniversary reissue of their debut album, the New Yorkers remain masters of delayed gratification in a cracking set of hits past TV on the Radio kick off the first night of their sold-out three-day residency in north London with a deceptively mellow thrum – the kinetic sort that holds the promise of electricity. The band were originally a pivot…

From voters picking up ‘bad vibes’ to the Brat girl summer, vague instincts now make the world go round. Does this represent a crisis of seriousness or has it always been feelings that make us human? Facts were cool for about 250 years. From the Enlightenment until this century, facts were where it was at. They had a good innings. But it is game over for facts, the end of the line for statistics.…

His intense turn in Netflix’s smash hit thriller made the Croydon-born actor go global. Next up he’s playing Mufasa in the Lion King prequel. Bring on the big roles, he says Imagine a young James Earl Jones, Darth Vader himself, if he was from south London. That’s how smooth and chill Aaron Pierre, 30-year-old actor and star of Netflix hit Rebel Ridge, sounds when he fixes you with his sea-green …

The gardener turns storyteller, the star baritone keeps it tasteful and family harmony abounds, while the nation’s favourite festive choir is everywhere… Surely the world’s most affable gardener, Alan Titchmarsh, who shares his musical enthusiasms on his weekly Classic FM show , has hit the top spot in the UK official classical artist albums chart in the run-up to Christmas. Jack Frost: A Winter …

The SNL star and children’s author on finding inspiration in Roald Dahl, coming late to Muriel Spark, and taking comfort in Yuval Noah Harari My earliest reading memory I loved The Berenstain Bears books by Stan and Jan Berenstain. There was one book that went into how the young bears built a tree house. I read it over and over again. My favourite book growing up I always loved nonfiction as much…

The BBC’s flagship show has been teetering on the brink of expulsion but it has managed to hold on to its glittering crown for another year at least After being beset by scandal all summer, this was a make-or-break series for Strictly Come Dancing. Happily for viewers, the show bounced back with a spring in its step and a smile on its spray-tanned face. Not one but two male professionals departed…

The singer-songwriter on the early days of Wham!, his ‘Count Dracula’ grandfather, and an ice-cream disaster Born in Surrey, Andrew Ridgeley, 61, formed Wham! with his school friend George Michael. From 1982, the band dominated the charts with hits such as Club Tropicana, Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go, Freedom and I’m Your Man. This year is the 40th anniversary of the release of their single Last C…

Sadly for UK viewers, this is not a sexy reboot of one of our greatest film franchises. All the roles in it, however, have their equivalents For vulgar-minded Brits, a Hollywood film title sometimes carries its own unintended associations and unfortunate resonances. Many were pained at the raucous response from some here in 2017 to the title of Robert Redford’s earnest film Our Souls at Night . N…

Ahead of the release of We Live in Time next month, we celebrate the filmography of a breakout British star, from Little Women to Lady Macbeth The only reason this fabulous DreamWorks animation is not nearer the top of this list is that Pugh is not the star - that’s Antonio Banderas as Puss. But her Goldilocks, head of the Three Bears crime family, is surely channelling none other than the great …

The new building, 1 Undershaft, will be 309.6m tall, matching the height of the Shard to the centimetre The Shard is going to have to share its title of the UK’s tallest building after planning permission was granted for a new skyscraper in the City of London. When it is completed early next decade, 1 Undershaft will be 309.6m tall, matching the height of the Shard to the centimetre, the maximum …

(somethingscosmic) Five rising artists each perform one of their songs, then the US singer-songwriter covers another one of their tracks in a set of woebegone elegance Angel Olsen’s last album was 2022’s country-tinged, grief-wrought Big Time ; a stopgap EP, Forever Means , came out in 2023. Cosmic Waves Volume 1 feels like the work of an artist buying more time, but in a good way – investing in …