ONE OF THE MOST GRIMLY FUNNY POEMS OF the past century is Philip Larkin’s “This Be the Verse,” with its opening salvo about how our parents invariably mess us up. Larkin used a saltier word for “mess,

SOME DAYS IT SEEMS WE LIVE IN A HORRID WORLD where most humans couldn’t give a fig about art. How many people in that world are going to care about a 65-year-old black-and-white movie—one that, for an

A Spanish novelist’s portrait of Pope Francis

Dir Dean Puckett, UK 2025 On digital platforms Folk horror has been a thing for a long time, but it’s an over-used term these days. In film terms it appears to mean something heavily influenced by Wit

Two photographers, two very different journeys. As Leica celebrates a century of image-making, the 2025 Oskar Barnack Awards honour Alejandro Cegarra’s searing study of migration and Serghei Duve’s intimate meditation on memory and identity. Peter Dench finds out more

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