I remember, 10 or 15 years ago, I said, `Look, any actor who’s still standing in 10 or 15 years, and isn’t a robot, is going to be very important!’ “I asked if he would still want to make a film from Henderson the Rain King – a pet project based on Saul Bellow’s 1959 [...]

A century ago scientists seized the art of photography and its ability to stop life and imbued it with powers of authority and truth. It was a dream tool – modern in its mechanism, able to reflect precisely what the eye saw undistorted by the interpretation and emotion that muddied art – or so these [...]

I was instantaneously aware of that.””Do you know now who your father was?””No, and I really hadn’t much curiosity about that.””Would you rather not know?””I suppose that would be the way to put it, since I haven’t really gone after it at all. I mean I’d love to meet two or three people now with [...]

His cousin was already a lightkeeper, and Bruce was stuck in Anstruther, Fife, at a loose end. “I was from a mining community, I didn’t know anything about the service before I went in, not a thing.” His wife Hazel remembers the early days: “When Bruce joined, everyone where we came from gave us six [...]

All the exhibits are telling and some of them are of very high quality. And while an often- told lesson is that British artists lagged behind innovations made elsewhere, the story of our own painting and sculpture does have its brightness. The rediscovery of neglected canvasses reminds us of something often forgotten: what excitement there [...]

It reserves the larger mussels for its platters (see below), allowing about 24 per person.Mussels are easy to cook, full of minerals, protein and almost no fat, unlike the traditional accompaniment: mayonnaise “Mayonnaise is a French custom. When I first came to Belgium we used to eat mussels with piccalilli,”says Denis.Ingredients per serving500g/1lb 2oz large [...]

Mr Jospin, 59, has been suffering unhelpful, and often unfair, comparisons with Mr Blair for months. They have become thick and fast since the snap French parliamentary election was announced by President Jacques Chirac on Monday.”It seems to me that the British Labour party has had its cultural revolution, but not the French Socialists,” said [...]