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The office worker who became the first person ever to appear on TV

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Enter William Taynton, a 20-year-old office boy who was working downstairs from Baird's makeshift laboratory. He told the BBC 40 years later to the day: "Mr Baird came rushing down full of excitement and almost dragged me out of my office to go to his small laboratory. I think he was so excited at the time that words didn't come. He almost grabbed me and wanted me to get upstairs as quickly as possible."When Taynton came across the ramshackle state of Baird's laboratory, he said he felt like running straight back down the stairs. First, he had to navigate his…

11 of the best TV shows to watch this October

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Riot Women premieres 22 October on Britbox in the US and in October on BBC1 in the UKWarner Bros9. It: Welcome to DerryOnly in Stephen King's world could a welcome message sound so menacing. Pennywise, the evil clown played by Bill Skarsgård in the films It (2017) and It: Chapter Two (2019) had to start somewhere, and Skarsgård returns in this prequel series, based on the "interlude" chapters in the 1986 King novel that inspired the films. The show is set in 1962 in Derry, Maine (far from the Ireland of Derry Girls) where a couple with a young son…

Why Anna Magnani is the overlooked ‘goddess’ of Italian cinema

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Less than a year earlier, Teresa Gullace, a six-month-pregnant mother of five had been shot in Rome by a Nazi soldier after she waved at her captive husband. In the film, Francesco shouts "Teresa", as an homage. At the time, Magnani was also suffering, as her son had contracted polio.An unconventional star Magnani's communication of this raw pain on screen is perhaps one reason why she is less popular in the US today than other iconic Italian actresses. "Anna is the embodiment of a country that came out of the war with the courage of showing its wounds," says De Bernardinis.…

The pioneering photographer who captured the horror of World War Two

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Miller's headstrong creativity is evoked by her wry quotes; she once explained of her work: "It was a matter of getting out on a damn limb, and sawing it off behind you." The urgency, audaciousness, and unexpected compassion that defines so much of her photography is also inextricably linked to her personal experience.She was born in 1907 in Poughkeepsie, New York State; she began her global adventures in her youth, though her ultimate home was Farleys House in the East Sussex countryside, where she moved in 1949 with her husband, British painter and curator Roland Penrose, and their infant son…

12 of the best films to watch this October

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Released on 24 October in the US and Canada, and internationally from 30 OctoberDisneySpringsteen: Deliver Me from NowhereAre we moving on from the era when pop music biopics such as Ray, Walk the Line and Elvis would squeeze decades of a star's life into two hours? Last year's A Complete Unknown concentrated on the earliest years of Bob Dylan's career, and now Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere dramatises an even shorter chapter of its subject's life story. As played by Jeremy Allen White (The Bear), Bruce Springsteen is shown making just one album, 1982's Nebraska. He is on the verge…

The dog-centred horror led by a new canine acting ‘superstar’

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"The idea started as a concept after watching Poltergeist [1982] for probably the 100th time," Leonberg tells BBC Culture. "In the opening of that film, the family's dog clearly senses the presence of the ghost before anyone else. That trope of 'the dog who knows better' appears in so many horror films, and I thought, 'Someone should really tell that story from the dog's perspective.'"Leonberg didn't have to search far to cast the lead, as Indy is his own dog, who he thought could be perfect due to his "intense, unblinking stare". Through expressive head tilts, whimpers and inquisitive stares,…

How The Social Network predicted the future of tech

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Zuckerberg may have a point, but it's hardly the first time that a film has twisted the truth for dramatic and thematic purposes. "As a historian and someone who believes very strongly in media literacy, I always approach and encourage others to approach a film based on real events as still a dramatisation," Jason Steinhauer, the author of History, Disrupted: How Social Media and the World Wide Web Have Changed the Past, tells the BBC. "Every Hollywood film takes liberties, removes elements from the story, heightens the drama, and accentuates certain characters, all in the name of storytelling. I would…

The century-long search for the Loch Ness Monster

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The most famous image appeared in 1934 at the height of Nessie-mania: a slender, serpent-like neck rising from the loch. For decades, the photo baffled Nessieologists. In 1979, Californian naturalist Dennis Power suggested the "monster" it depicted was an elephant swimming with its trunk above water. Elephants, he noted, could swim up to 30 miles. While admitting the idea of an elephant in the Scottish Highlands was almost as unlikely as a real monster, he said: "We'd love to apply for a government grant for four round-trip tickets to Scotland and 40 tonnes of peanuts to try and trap it,…

Why Britain loved Jilly Cooper’s raunchy books

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Getty ImagesCooper's books have been bestsellers since the 1980s (Credit: Getty Images)Daisy Buchanan, author of books including Insatiable and Limelight, host of the You're Booked podcast and Jilly Cooper superfan, first discovered the writer as a teenager. "I think I was about 13 when I fell in love with Jilly's books," she tells BBC Culture. "Riders and Rivals were being passed around at school, almost 20 years after they were first published, which is a testament to her power. Her stories are dramatic, extravagant, escapist tales – but while she sets her books in glamorous worlds, her characters are so…

Astrophysicist explains one concept in 5 Levels of difficulty

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With their feet dangling, and amusing themselves–until I stopped them–by throwing stones at the giant mass. After I had spoken to them about it, they began playing at “touch” in and out of the group of bystanders. Among these were a couple of cyclists, a jobbing gardener I employed sometimes, a girl carrying a baby, Gregg the butcher and his little boy, and two or three loafers and golf caddies who were accustomed to hang about the railway station. There was very little talking. Few of the common people in England had anything but the vaguest astronomical ideas in those…