Welcome to Arts & Cultures, where you will find world-class reviews of literature, film and music. You will also find kaleidoscopic analysis of everyday objects, from hair to shorelines.

Mazí Mas, “with us”

Nikandre Kopcke 4 March 2013

Women have played a seminal role in keeping food cultures all over the world alive. Nikandre Kopcke discusses her inspiration for setting up a pop-up restaurant which showcases the culinary talents and diverse cultural heritages of migrant women in London.

The great tide of 31 January 1953

Ken Worpole 25 January 2013

An enormous surge of water over the coastal lands of south-east England sixty years ago took hundreds of lives and marked survivors for a lifetime. A meticulous account of the tragedy written a few years later is still the best source to understand what happened, says Ken Worpole, a native of one of the places most affected, Canvey Island.

Mo Yan and China's prize

Temtsel Hao 19 December 2012

The award of the Nobel literature prize to a Chinese writer favoured by the authorities provoked disputes both on the Chinese internet and in Swedish public life, says Temtsel Hao.

Mo Yan's Nobel, an ideal betrayed

Mo Li 19 December 2012

The Swedish Academy's award of the Nobel literature prize to the Chinese novelist Mo Yan violates the principles of its founder and represents a collusion with authoritarian power, says the Sweden-based Chinese writer Mo Li.

Brave New World reimagined

Geoff Andrews 16 July 2012

Aldous Huxley's dystopian novel Brave New World (1931) is acquiring fresh meanings in another era of crisis and pacifying solutions, says Geoff Andrews.

Bob Dylan at 70: revolution in the head, revisited

David Hayes 24 May 2012

The most influential and original musician of the 1960s generation remains a figure of protean creativity half a century on. The wealth of attention devoted to Bob Dylan as he reaches his 70th birthday is testament to a career of astonishing range. It also reflects the complex legacy of a formative decade which Dylan’s songs and persona helped to define, says David Hayes.

(This article was first published on 24 May 2011)

Bob Dylan: a conversation

David Hayes 24 May 2012

The celebrations of the 70th birthday of the great American musician Bob Dylan include many personal journeys through the archives of memory. Here, David Hayes recalls a thrilling series of concerts Dylan performed in 1981...and a late-night encounter.

(This article was first published on 24 May 2011)

India is ready for change, but censorship, taxation and corruption plagued the Art Fair

Preti Taneja

The fourth annual India Art Fair (IAF), held earlier this year, was hailed by Indian and international media as proof of an art culture come of age. The private opening was packed with the art-hungry moneyed class from all over the world, not least among them Indian buyers with an eye on potential investments.

Law & Order, take two

David Elstein 21 February 2012
The successful New York-set crime series Law & Order has generated numerous spin-offs, remakes and reworkings. A coincidental showing of the same episode in its US and UK versions offers David Elstein, a devotee of the original, the chance to make a scene-by-scene comparison. Such an analysis, he says, confirms the superior quality of Dick Wolf's show and suggests that this is symptomatic of a wide gap in the creative cultures of US and UK drama.

Cornelius Cardew lives

Virginia Anderson

Cornelius Cardew (1936-81) developed a philosophy of experimental notation and indeterminacy that influenced art music throughout the world. He was a deeply moral thinker, engaged in a constant struggle for truth in art, life, the political world, and himself. In face of all criticism and mockery, he stood with his personal, political and aesthetic beliefs against British musical conservatism, the avant-garde establishment, and finally, the experimentalism he himself had created.

Railtracks

John Berger and Anne Michaels 5 November 2011
"Impossible now to think of train travel without a kind of tenderness - as if that is what love is: arrival after arrival". A conversation between the writers Anne Michaels and John Berger, in dialogue with a photographic journey through southern Bohemia, evokes the intimate meanings and shared belongings that unfold to the rhythm and the heartbeat of the world the railways made.

Derick Thomson at 90: Gaelic poet in the world

David Hayes 5 August 2011
Ruaraidh MacThòmais (Derick Thomson) has as poet, scholar, teacher and editor made a profound contribution to Gaelic literature over six decades. The quality and range of his work deserve belated recognition in the context of the culture he has done so much to enlarge, says David Hayes.

Cornelius Cardew: a life unfinished

David Hayes

The English composer Cornelius Cardew (1936-81) was among the most adventurous, controversial and innovative musicians of his generation. After an initial association with Stockhausen and the European avant-garde, he became engaged with the aesthetic ideas of John Cage and the New York school. A leading figure in the experimental music of the 1960s, Cardew is widely acknowledged as a pioneer of indeterminacy, graphic notation, free improvisation and performer involvement.

Vapor Trail (Clark): wastes of history

Graeme Hobbs 29 January 2011
A cinematic project in the Philippines that began as an exercise in political documentary and ended as excavation of the toxic legacies of the country’s early-20th century war with America is a vital counterblast to global amnesia, says Graeme Hobbs.


The fiction of climate change

Andrew Dobson 17 September 2010
What is a climate-change novel, and what makes a good one? Andrew Dobson takes time from his day job as professor of politics to read the existing literature and emerge with suggestions about how to do it better.

This week's editor

Heather McRobie


Niki Seth-Smith is a freelance journalist and co-editor of OurKingdom.

Europe from the bottom up

European Union stars in Paris. Flickr/notarim. Some rights reserved.

A new Europe can only come from the bottom up
Etienne Balibar

A social Europe must be a political Europe
Bo Stråth

As Europe is provincialized: a reply to Etienne Balibar
Sandro Mezzadra

European debate

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Democratic Wealth

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Nuclear non-proliferation

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Women and the Arab Spring

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oDRussia at journalismfestival .com

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Mali - the plot thickens

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Remote control war

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The media in Europe

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