Culture

Former Top Gear presenter Quentin Wilson dies at 68 | Top Gear

Former Top Gear presenter Quentin Wilson dies at 68 | Top Gear

💥 Discover this must-read post from Culture | The Guardian 📖 📂 Category: Top Gear,Factual TV,Media,Television,Motoring,Motoring 💡 Here’s what you’ll learn: Former Top Gear presenter Quentin Wilson has died after a short illness, his family announced on Saturday. He was 68 years old.A statement said that the TV presenter and automotive journalist died “peacefully, surrounded by his family.”Wilson was one of the first presenters of the BBC motoring programme, alongside Jeremy Clarkson, before progressing to Channel 5 show Fifth Gear.He hosted Top Gear from 1991 until 2001 and went on to create and present shows including Britain's Worst Drivers and…
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Pioneering British Museum display challenges samurai myths | British Museum

Pioneering British Museum display challenges samurai myths | British Museum

🚀 Read this awesome post from Culture | The Guardian 📖 📂 Category: British Museum,UK news,Japan,Culture,Museums 💡 Here’s what you’ll learn: A pioneering samurai exhibition that promises to challenge “everything we think we know about Japan’s warrior elite” and spans a millennium of myth and reality, is set to open at the British Museum next year.The blockbuster Samurai-themed show will reveal a world beyond armor-clad warriors and epic duels, as popularized by the noble, katana-wielding heroes of Akira Kurosawa's classic action films and hit PlayStation video games.Many samurai myths - including even the word "samurai" - were invented long after…
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Bad Bridgets podcast about crime among Irish women in the US inspires the film | Podcast

Bad Bridgets podcast about crime among Irish women in the US inspires the film | Podcast

🚀 Read this trending post from Culture | The Guardian 📖 📂 Category: Podcasts,Film,Ireland,Culture,Women,Migration,Heritage,Europe,UK news,Northern Ireland 📌 Here’s what you’ll learn: It began as a web of dusty archives for an academic project on Irish women immigrants to Canada and the United States by two history professors, a worthy but perhaps niche topic.After all, these subjects were human detritus from the Irish diaspora whose existence was often not recorded, let alone remembered.They were poor girls and women who ended up on the wrong side of the law and lived and died in abject poverty, footnotes in the mass migrations to…
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Al Watan Review – Rough banter and barbed exchanges on the bus | stage

Al Watan Review – Rough banter and barbed exchanges on the bus | stage

🔥 Discover this must-read post from Culture | The Guardian 📖 📂 Category: Theatre,Stage,Hampstead theatre,Culture 💡 Main takeaway: nAnnecy Farino's debut play deals with the fault lines in the relationship between father and daughter. It's a refreshing theme, set on wheels, like a road trip on which Winston (Jason Thorpe) takes Joey (also Farino) by rail, after refitting a school bus into a camper van.Joy is a reluctant passenger, Winston is Tigerish's life coach and an overbearing father who sells the trip to her as a voyage of discovery after tracing the family tree to County Mayo. They are both…
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Richard Ashcroft Review – Uplifting epics and rocket-fueled confidence reminiscent of the heyday of the 90s | music

Richard Ashcroft Review – Uplifting epics and rocket-fueled confidence reminiscent of the heyday of the 90s | music

✨ Read this must-read post from Culture | The Guardian 📖 📂 Category: Music,Pop and rock,Richard Ashcroft,Culture,The Verve ✅ Key idea: IIt's been quite a year for Richard Ashcroft, whether opening for reformed Oasis at their stadium-sized comeback shows or scoring another No. 2 album with Lovin' You. Now, this one-off, 23,500-seat show ahead of next year's arena tour finds the 54-year-old Northern performing with a rocketing confidence reminiscent of his '90s days in The Verve.At the time, the music press dubbed the singer "Mad Richard" because of his faith in music and his astonishing suggestion that he could fly…
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‘Ambition is a punitive field for women’: Writer Maggie Nelson on why Taylor Swift is the Sylvia Plath of her generation | Articles

‘Ambition is a punitive field for women’: Writer Maggie Nelson on why Taylor Swift is the Sylvia Plath of her generation | Articles

✨ Check out this must-read post from Culture | The Guardian 📖 📂 Category: Essays,Books,Culture,Taylor Swift,Sylvia Plath,Autobiography and memoir,Biography books,Poetry,Music books,Kamala Harris 📌 Here’s what you’ll learn: MAggie Nelson is a huge fan of Taylor Swift. She knows the discography, brings the lyrics into conversation, and tells me she took her family to the Vancouver leg of the Eras tour. So she's a dyed-in-the-wool Swiftie? It seems Nelson isn't entirely comfortable with the breathless connotations of the term, but yes, love is real. So much so that she wrote a book about the billionaire singer-songwriter, or rather, a joint analysis…
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The novels I haven’t finished reading pile up next to my bed. What if this is a good thing? | Hannah Thomas Ossie

The novels I haven’t finished reading pile up next to my bed. What if this is a good thing? | Hannah Thomas Ossie

🚀 Explore this insightful post from Culture | The Guardian 📖 📂 Category: Books,Culture,UK news 💡 Here’s what you’ll learn: TIts embarrassing, but here it goes. There are five novels by my bed, all partially read. On my phone, I browse through 36 audiobooks, a number that pales in comparison to the 46 e-books I have left on my Kindle. That's not counting the growing pile of advance copies next to my coffee table, vying for publicity, and I'm now a published novelist.At first glance, these statistics seem to confirm Ian Rankin's statement. Commenting two weeks ago on how easy…
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‘We don’t want to leave people shocked and shaken’: Inside the new video play about violent porn addiction | Ambika Mod

‘We don’t want to leave people shocked and shaken’: Inside the new video play about violent porn addiction | Ambika Mod

💥 Discover this must-read post from Culture | The Guardian 📖 📂 Category: Ambika Mod,Theatre,Josie Rourke,Stage,Royal Court theatre,Culture,Pornography,John Milton 📌 Key idea: IIn Sophia Chetin's play Leuner's Erotica, which has just opened at the Royal Court in London, Annie is a 30-year-old academic on the frontiers of intellectual discovery: she wins awards for her radical revision of John Milton's Paradise Lost, and effortlessly wins the admiration of her teacher and students alike. She is also addicted to violent pornography and masturbates constantly. She can't stay in a real sexual moment, but she can't stay in a real-life conversation either—she's constantly…
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“Anastacia is a huge inspiration to me – raw, raw and honest”: Ella Eyre’s Honest Playlist | music

“Anastacia is a huge inspiration to me – raw, raw and honest”: Ella Eyre’s Honest Playlist | music

💥 Discover this insightful post from Culture | The Guardian 📖 📂 Category: Music,Culture 💡 Key idea: The first song I fell in love withThe first song I remember feeling inspired by was Good Luck by Basement Jaxx. My mom had all her CDs. “Good Luck” was the first song I sang for my manager before they joined me, so I still love it very much.First song I bought My mum gave me the money to go and buy Jamiroquai's Feels Just Like It Does for 69p from HMV in Oxford Circus. This was my first time buying a physical…
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The allure – and police – of subway surfing

The allure – and police – of subway surfing

✨ Check out this awesome post from The New Yorker 📖 📂 Category: Culture / Critic’s Notebook 📌 Main takeaway: Are thrill-seeking children like birds, deterred by the metaphorical spikes on the roof? In late October, the RTA installed barriers — vertical pads made of hard rubber — between cars on some trains running on the 7th Line, restricting the climbing routes. These experiments in design cannot obscure the fact that the problem has mostly been handed over to the police. This year, the NYPD arrested more than one hundred and twenty people on suspicion of riding out of a…
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