Culture

Pete’s a music journalist, and this is the story of his love of music as a child, and how it gave him a sense of identity. His parents had come over from Greece with great promises of work that fell through, and they ended up running a chip shop. He writes about the acts that first made sense to him as a child, like Leo Sayer and the Barron Knights, and I really got that: my equivalents were the Bay City Rollers from a few years earlier. Pop music that means the world to you when you’re young doesn’t often get written about. … [Read more...] about On my radar: Tim Burgess’s cultural highlights

But such far-reaching conspiracies were not always fringe. Michael Butter, professor of American Literary and Cultural History at the University of Tübingen, says that between the 17th century and the 1950s, such fantastic stories were a universally accepted way of understanding the world. At the time, the theories most often were about subversives trying to undermine established power. Today the script has been flipped, meaning the all-powerful state and its mastermind cronies want to control the humble citizen. … [Read more...] about Latest conspiracy theories repeat old stories

"The idea of being on these endless futuristic roads but being surrounded by these ancient forests at the same time. It’s a magical feeling and it makes you think of soundtracks in your head as you’re travelling through this landscape,” says Nicky Wire. … [Read more...] about Manic Street Preachers – Europa Geht Durch Mich: video premiere

The funniest hairstyle I’ve ever had … On a school trip to France in my early teens a bunch of pubescently rebellious friends and I decided to dye our fringes blond. Naturally, by “fringe” I mean my entire head and by “blond” I mean orange. … [Read more...] about Liam Williams: ‘I like saying poem to rhyme with home’

We had two excellent researchers digging through archives to find fresh film. Newsreel alone is no good because it's already been edited and is propagandistic in tone. A BBC cameraman who had filmed on the Dunkirk beaches told me that nothing he had shot there was ever used because it showed an army in defeat. But the most remarkable raw footage I saw was found in German archives. It showed a handful of German soldiers with the population of a Russian village assembled on one side of a bridge, divided into men and women. They were sent off in different directions in tears – they knew they'd never see each other again. … [Read more...] about Jeremy Isaacs and David Elstein: how we made The World at War