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Walt Disney: One man and his mouse... and how they blighted our world

Sat, 25 May 2013 18:00:00 +0100

What is a "perfect American"? Where might he be hiding? Is he a saint or a sinner? Can't he be both? In Philip Glass's new opera, the title is loaded with irony and foreboding, and it settles on a candidate you might not think of straight away. It's your Uncle Walt.

The Conversation: Natalie Bennett, Green Party leader

Sat, 25 May 2013 00:00:00 +0100

You were born, raised and schooled in Australia and worked in Thailand – how did you find yourself leading the Green Party of England and Wales?

Death becomes her: Meet the very modern mortician who champions 'cool' funerals

Sat, 25 May 2013 00:00:00 +0100

Before we begin our interview, I ask Caitlin Doughty to take me somewhere meaningful: a place that she loves, or to which she has some deep spiritual or biographical connection. It's a sunny day, like a lot of days in Los Angeles, and so she drives us both the few blocks from her home to Angelus Rosedale, the biggest, greenest open space in the non-descript neighbourhood known as Mid-City. Bees buzz nearby as we stroll across the impeccably kempt grass.

'If you want to know about me and Morrissey, Google it': Ex-Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr talks relationships and reunions

Sat, 25 May 2013 00:00:00 +0100

Around half an hour into my conversation with Johnny Marr, things take a distinctly awkward turn. Up until this point, the hallowed ex-Smiths guitarist-turned-serial collaborator-turned-solo artist has been warm, chatty, full of sunshine and bonhomie. As we are introduced, I mention that we met once before about 10 years ago and Marr – looking sharp in dark jeans, Crombie-style coat, his hair sculpted into the customary Mod cut – does a valiant job of pretending to remember.

Michael Douglas: Hollywood studios didn't believe he could impersonate the outrageously camp Liberace in Behind the Candelabra. They were wrong

Fri, 24 May 2013 18:14:38 +0100

When the American film director Steven Soderbergh approached Hollywood studios in 2011, asking them for $5m to finance Behind the Candelabra, his film about Liberace and his five-year affair with Scott Thorson, he was startled by their reaction. They all turned him down flat. Although the cast featured two Oscar-winning actors, the film would, they said, appeal only to a gay audience.

Thomas Muller: Bayern Munich couldn't handle losing a Champions League final again

Fri, 24 May 2013 01:00:00 +0100

He had won the European Cup. That much was certain. The header had been from close range at the far post and was directed powerfully downwards. The ball touched the bottom of the crossbar as it went in. There were seven minutes left. Bayern Munich had lined up to take shots. They had missed a penalty, struck the post, had a goal disallowed. Chelsea had yet to force a corner. Finally, the knockout blow had been delivered.

Chief executive Ferran Soriano predicts success at Manchester City if 'vision' of 'City players' is followed

Fri, 24 May 2013 01:00:00 +0100

Ferran Soriano is sitting at the top of the world – in the vast, airy "SoHi" room at the peak of a New York hotel with views across the place he calls "the greatest city in the world," having momentarily left Manchester out of the mental equation.

Suli Breaks: The secret of success? Forget exams – it’s all about getting the Breaks

Thu, 23 May 2013 19:23:15 +0100

In amongst videos of cats annoying their owners and trailers for the latest Ryan Gosling movie, a five-minute précis on the state of education does not stand out as an obvious YouTube hit – even if it is recited atop John Murphy’s “Adagio in D Minor” from the soundtrack to the sci-fi movie Sunshine.

Chris Durban: I sank a German U-boat in 1943, I was just 20-years-old and terrified

Thu, 23 May 2013 17:08:53 +0100

The last time Able Seaman Chris Durban saw a U-boat he was ramming the HMS Brilliant destroyer into it in the middle of the Atlantic on Christmas Day 1943.

Stuart Hogg: Ready to climb his own Everest

Tue, 21 May 2013 22:41:49 +0100

Stuart Hogg knows the words of Jim Telfer, the finale to the "this is your Everest" speech delivered by the granite-hewn Scot on the eve of the 1997 series in South Africa, the last time the Lions came home victorious. They are written in rugby history, a seminal moment in the Lions story, and Hogg, despite being the cub of the latest tour party, knows his rugby history.

Cannes Film Festival 2013 review: Behind The Candelabra - Michael Douglas brilliantly captures Liberace's showmanship

Tue, 21 May 2013 15:06:00 +0100

Anyone who knows Michael Douglas best as the predatory, macho Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone’s Wall St movies will be startled by his transformation in Steven Soderbergh’s Behind The Candelabra.

James Runcie: 'I want a cross between the Open University and a party'

Mon, 20 May 2013 01:04:56 +0100

Seven months ago, James Runcie found himself inextricably double-booked: as the outgoing artistic director of the Bath Literature Festival, he was expected to pack his swansong with fireworks, while as the incoming director of the London Literature Festival, which opens tonight, he was under pressure to begin with a bang.

How we met: Jamie Cullum & Laura Mvula

Sun, 19 May 2013 00:00:00 +0100

Jamie Cullum, 33

Macklemore: 'I don't have moderation when using drugs and alcohol. It was hurting my life'

Sun, 19 May 2013 00:00:00 +0100

Ben Haggerty, better known by his rap alias Macklemore, has just hit the big time. You may not recognise his name yet, but by the end of the summer you will, and if you've ever heard his number-one hit "Thrift Shop", a high-octane tongue-in-cheek ode to charity shopping, chances are that its ferociously catchy chorus is still looping round inside your head.

'It was mass hysteria': Jason Isaacs on groupies, theatre bores and snogging James Bond

Sat, 18 May 2013 00:00:00 +0100

Lucius Malfoy never got to keep his 'Paris Hilton wig'. Or rather Jason Isaacs wasn't allowed to take home Malfoy's so-named, blond hairpiece when they finally wrapped the last Harry Potter movie.

The Conversation: Tracey Cox, sex expert

Sat, 18 May 2013 00:00:00 +0100

How does one become a 'sexpert'?

Graham Norton: The go-to guy for anything from the Baftas to becoming 'the new Terry Wogan' and hosting the Eurovision Song Contest

Fri, 17 May 2013 18:47:43 +0100

On Saturday, connoisseurs of kitsch performance, fancy dress, risibly bouncy tunes and strategically political voting will tune into the final of the Eurovision Song Contest in Malmo, Sweden.

Newcastle United goalkeeper Steve Harper: My darkest times

Fri, 17 May 2013 01:00:00 +0100

Dark times, Steve Harper calls them as conjures the image in jolting words. He is good company – a loyal club man and a miner's son holding court on the 20 years' service he has given to Newcastle United. With that about to end on Sunday afternoon, in the Premier League against Arsenal, a reflective conversation turns to a spell in his career eight years ago.

James Wharton profile: A young man in a hurry

Thu, 16 May 2013 20:04:00 +0100

Whichever way you look at it, James Wharton will go far. One of Westminster’s fastest-rising MPs, he is also one of its more well-travelled.

Peter Fulton: Two-Metre Peter standing tall in his second coming as Test player

Tue, 14 May 2013 21:51:19 +0100

Two-Metre Peter has risen to his full height at last. After years when it seemed that his batting career might remain unfulfilled he suddenly emerged as a marauding avenger laying waste to all before him.

Olivia trivia: the Colman files

Mon, 13 May 2013 19:36:35 +0100

1. Her first ever acting role was as Miss Jean Brodie

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt goes on the wards to make a hands-on diagnosis of the NHS

Sun, 12 May 2013 22:00:05 +0100

Cynics will dismiss it as a stunt. But for the past few months and with little publicity Jeremy Hunt has been out on the wards. One day each week the Health Secretary has left Whitehall to spend time “working” on the front line of his sprawling NHS empire.

Amelia Andersdotter: Internet copyright laws? They can walk the plank, says Pirate Party politician

Sun, 12 May 2013 19:55:43 +0100

For a self-proclaimed pirate, there’s not a lot of yo-ho-ho about Amelia Andersdotter. The youngest member of the European Parliament may be only 25 but she has serious work to do.

Alan Ashworth: Enough of the back slapping, let's find a cure for cancer

Sun, 12 May 2013 09:07:00 +0100

Professor Alan Ashworth is on a mission. He made his name by helping to discover one of the key breast cancer genes and now he wants to destigmatise lung cancer, a disease tainted by its association with smoking and an unhealthy lifestyle.

'On stage I'm just me having a bad day': Nick Cave on 40 years of music and mayhem

Sun, 12 May 2013 00:00:00 +0100

Britain's greatest living Australian (pace any UK-resident Murdochs, of course) is leading his band in a boiling, surging, argy-bargy-blues set. He sings "Honey Bee (Let's Fly to Mars)" with a perma-frown, his equine nostrils aflare to his ears, his flouncy shirt agape to his nipples.

How We Met: Anna Chancellor & Mark Umbers

Sun, 12 May 2013 00:00:00 +0100

Anna Chancellor, 48

Credo: Actor and horror-film director Eli Roth on phobias, nightmares - and romcom tears

Sun, 12 May 2013 00:00:00 +0100

I love to terrify people As things get worse in this world, and people feel a loss of control over things, they need an outlet, a place they are allowed to be really scared. Where better than horror movies?

Laura Robson: Wimbledon? Olympic gold? I'm not fussed

Sun, 12 May 2013 00:00:00 +0100

It has been a typically up-and-down week for Laura Robson. The 19-year-old parted company with her coach, scraped through her opening match at the Madrid Open against a lower-ranked opponent, enjoyed one of her finest victories over the world No 4, Agnieszka Radwanska, and finally lost a late-night thriller, letting slip a 5-2 lead in the deciding set against Ana Ivanovic. Life is rarely dull when Britain's best woman tennis player for more than 20 years is around.

Stuart Broad: Taking comfort from Jimmy Anderson's revival

Sun, 12 May 2013 00:00:00 +0100

He has contributed to two successful Ashes campaigns, helped England win an ICC title and is captain of his country at Twenty20 level. Stuart Broad's career has known troughs as well as peaks, but when reflecting on what he has accomplished it is hard to believe that he is still only 26.

The Conversation: Jon Lee Anderson, foreign correspondent

Sat, 11 May 2013 00:00:00 +0100

Your father was a diplomat and you had lived in, by my count, seven different countries by the time you were an adult. Can you imagine a life without travel?

Top of the crops: Michael Bolton on critics, crooning and why the mullet had to go

Sat, 11 May 2013 00:00:00 +0100

I meet Michael Bolton – 'Grammy-award winner' and 'humanitarian', but never 'crooner' or 'soft-rock balladeer' according to the instructions to TV producers that somehow got caught up in my own press bumpf – at a London hotel and the first thing that strikes me is how small he is. Not tiny. He couldn't sit under a mushroom, for example, or crawl in through your cat-flap. But I had expected him to be a strapping, imposing fellow – probably, I now realise, because his songs are so brilliantly anthemic and huge and chest-beating, I was thinking of Tarzan. But he is actually fine-boned and petite.

Melanie Phillips: The scourge of the Left has joined the world of e-publishing

Fri, 10 May 2013 20:01:47 +0100

Melanie Phillips, star columnist of the Daily Mail, has taken the first step to becoming a global brand. On Thursday evening, a select group of friends, past and present colleagues, and ideological soulmates including the Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith gathered at Brown’s, a five-star hotel in Mayfair, to see it all begin.

Who else stood the test of Fergie time? From Thatcher to Jagger, meet the people who stayed at the top of their game for a generation

Fri, 10 May 2013 19:15:10 +0100

Politics

Dai Greene & gold: Brit aims to rule the world after Olympic agony

Mon, 06 May 2013 23:36:24 +0100

So many British Olympic and Paralympic medals were won last summer – 185 in all – that those who missed out were almost forgotten, mere footnotes to the golden Games.

Karren Brady: 'If you don't have a woman on your board, write to your shareholders and explain why'

Sun, 05 May 2013 21:42:38 +0100

According to Karren Brady, at the very top "one of the hardest things you have to do is say 'no' sometimes". Yet during the course of 20 years in football, the mother and writer best known for her role as managing director of Birmingham Football Club earned a reputation as "a sacker". Now Brady, 44, is gearing up to employ her formidable skills once more as Sir Alan Sugar's sidekick when The Apprentice returns tomorrow night on BBC1.

Jacqueline Wilson: 'Spelling is not something that seems to be taught at schools'

Sun, 05 May 2013 17:57:13 +0100

Tracy Beaker author Jacqueline Wilson has criticised the language skills of British schoolchildren – revealing that her young overseas fans write more eloquent English than UK kids.

Light relief: How the volatile actor Paddy Considine came to terms with an unusual ailment