Love, death, grief, power, revenge: Greek tragedies get to the essence of the human experience. Here, writers and artists select their favourite plays, music and films inspired by the classics, from The Hunger Games to a Santana hit
🔗 I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe: what Blade Runner 2049’s dystopia tells us about 2017
🔗 Blade Runner 2049 review - a future classic
The sequel to Ridley Scott’s 1982 classic manages to be both visually stunning and philosophically profound
🔗 Identity of casts of victims at Pompeii not all they seem, research suggests
Ancient DNA challenges prevailing interpretations of the Pompeii plaster casts
🔗 The Cure: Songs of a Lost World review – as promised, ‘very, very doom and gloom’
The band’s first album in 16 years finds Robert Smith and co on reliably melancholy form
🔗 The Cure: Songs of a Lost World review – dark, personal and their best since Disintegration
The band are at an artistic peak on their first album in 16 years: movingly melancholic, with a punchy sound to match the lyrics’ emotional impact
🔗 John Keats statue to be unveiled near his birthplace in London’s Moorgate
Martin Jennings – whose previous public sculptures include John Betjeman, George Orwell and Philip Larkin – has based his bronze on a life cast of the poet, taken when he was 21
🔗 Talking Heads with Adrian Belew Live Dortmund 1980. YouTube 🎵
🔗 I hate blind baking, can it ever be avoided?
After all, lots of recipes say to blind bake for only 15-20 minutes, which is just not correct. Instead, he insists, you need to do so for at least 35-40 minutes, and at a low oven temperature, too – 160C-170C (depending on your oven): If someone has never blind baked for that length of time, they’ll never have seen a really nice result, which is why it would feel a bit pointless.
🔗 Harrison Ford keeps working for ‘human contact’. Could he be any more beloved?
The man is a living legend with nothing left to prove, he doesn’t need to work other than for the simple pleasure of being around talented people – and it’s a joy to watch
Author of Madder Music, Stronger Wine: The Life of Ernest Dowson
🔗 The Cure: Alone review – majestically wreathed in misery and despair
Birds fall from the sky, broken voices call us home and youthful dreams are dashed against the transience of life in the band’s first new song in 16 years