Arts feature
Looking for a new England
Dan Hitchens on our love affair with the Anglo-Saxons
Lost and found
These rediscovered drawings by Hokusai point to him as the father of photography and modern animation, says Laura Gascoigne
Sea fever
From ancient Greece to TikTok: Alexandra Coghlan on the pulling power of shanties
The bimbofication of art
Galleries are awash with gimmicky paintings that look like they’ve been designed by algorithm. Dean Kissick on the rise of zombie figuration
Britain’s got talent
Brexit and Covid have pushed us out of the common musical market and thrown us back on homegrown sprouts. Good, says Norman Lebrecht
The trying game
Rosie Millard dispels the myth that persistence is always rewarded
People’s galleries
Ignore the activists, says Tristram Hunt, Alexander von Humboldt’s Enlightenment project, embodied in a flash new Berlin museum, deserves celebrating
Whodunnit?
The Master of Flémalle was one of the first painters to depict in detail the reality of ordinary things. But who was he? Martin Gayford finds a prime suspect
The Venus de Marlene
Tanjil Rashid on the legend of Dietrich
Going for a song
Alexandra Coghlan on how we became a nation of choirs and carollers
‘It was like a survivors’ circle’
Michael Hann talks to Corey Taylor, front man of ‘the most revolting band in the world’, about PTSD, Donald Trump and life after alcoholism
Vital signs
Laura Gascoigne meets Margaret Calvert, the designer who dragged British signposting into the modern era
The outsiders
Tanya Gold on the journalists who scripted the golden age of Hollywood
Painting vs sculpture
In an extract from their book, Antony Gormley tells Martin Gayford that the 3-D will always trump the 2-D
‘We’re all members of the Stasi now’
The arts are everywhere under attack from those who claim offence, writes Nina Power. Irvine Welsh steps into the fray with a documentary on the new censorship
Fantastic beasts and where to find them
Claudia Massie explores the cinematic majesty and mind-bending visual trickery of stop-motion wizard Ray Harryhausen
Home improvement
Squatting, gutting and retrofitting – and a lesson from India: Stuart Jeffries looks at the future of British architecture
Rare and precious
Martin Gayford explains why the Royal Academy would be wrong to sell Michelangelo’s ‘Taddei Tondo’
In two minds
Can people of one race really understand the experience of another? asks Colin Grant
Spirited away
The mediumistic art of various cranks, crackpots and old dowagers is finally being taken seriously – and about time too, says Laura Gascoigne
Peake practice
Mervyn Peake’s unsettling illustrations reveal a gentle, kindly man with the soul of a pirate, says Daisy Dunn
Paradis regained
Selina Mills on Maria Theresia von Paradis, the gifted but forgotten 18th-century composer, whose story will finally be told in a new chamber opera
National review
Why does the state fund theatres and not gardening and bingo, asks Lloyd Evans
Public art
On his lockdown rambles, Christopher Howse finds beauty and solace in London’s street furniture
The original Edinburgh festival
James Sadler’s 1815 balloon flight, a Fringe first, heralded the greatest musical extravaganza that Scotland had ever seen, says John D. Halliday
