BlinkDash

The ObserverBiography booksReviewMarco Pierre White was a talented chef, says Jay Rayner, but he serves up a less than toothsome portrait of himself in White SlaveWhite Slave by Marco Pierre White Orion £20, pp306 There was a time when Marco Pierre White was famous for cooking tagliatelle with oysters and caviar, a dish hailed by those lucky enough to eat it as one of the single greatest plates of food ever created.
How to recreate the white garden at Sissinghurst – in pictures Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share via Email Sissinghurst garden's creator, Vita Sackville-West, called it her grey, green and white garden – "grey clumps of foliage, pierced here and there with tall white flowers". The trouble is, many of these plants are border giants – onopordum, crambe, malva and the like.
The heat or eat diariesEnergy bills This article is more than 1 year oldI bought my sick dad some heated leggings that you charge up on a USB – all my energy is spent keeping him warmThis article is more than 1 year oldSiobhanThey were expensive, £30, so it was a big decision – but he doesn’t have central heating and he’s too ill to be cold This article is part of the heat or eat diaries: a series from the frontline of Britain’s cost of living emergency My dad is entitled to a rebate from his electricity provider – which got more and more urgent when temperatures dropped to -8C.
Top 10sFictionFrom Dostoevsky to Trollope, from anguished spiritual quests to social comedies, the novelist ordains the best fictional clericsFrom Friar Tuck to Father Ted, clergy occupy a special place in popular culture. Even the most anticlerical reader is likely to have a favourite fictional priest, if only in childhood memories of Roald Dahl's Vicar of Nibbleswicke. Although in recent years polemics against religion have eclipsed novels about religious life in both bestseller lists and media discourse, there remains a huge range of literary work featuring clergy, from Sloth, the drunken priest in William Langland's Piers Plowman, and the Monk, Friar, Pardoner and Parson in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, to Father Ralph de Bricassart in Colleen McCullough's The Thorn Birds and Father Lankester Merrin in William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist.
Music This article is more than 1 month oldMusic mogul Jimmy Iovine accused of sexual abuse and harassmentThis article is more than 1 month oldRepresentative for Iovine says they are ‘shocked and baffled’ by allegations made in summons in New York Jimmy Iovine, co-founder of Interscope Records and of the headphone brand Beats, has been accused of sexual abuse and harassment by an unnamed woman. Iovine was served a summons ahead of a lawsuit being filed against him.
Biography booksOn Sunday John Nash basked in adulation as A Beautiful Mind, the film based on his life, collected the Oscar for best picture. But his reputation has recently taken a battering: he's been called an anti-semite, an adulterer and a lousy father. So what is the truth about the mathematical genius who recovered from decades of schizophrenia to win a Nobel prize? Sylvia Nasar, his biographer, knows better than mostIt was a beautiful night at the Oscars for A Beautiful Mind, the Ron Howard movie starring Russell Crowe as a mathematical genius John Nash who triumphed over three decades of schizophrenia to win a Nobel prize.
Art and design This article is more than 1 year oldUnknown Modigliani sketches found hidden beneath Nude with HatThis article is more than 1 year oldMuseum hails ‘amazing discovery’ of three sketches beneath surface of one of celebrated artist’s paintings Curators at an Israeli museum have discovered three previously unknown sketches by the celebrated 20th-century artist Amedeo Modigliani hiding beneath the surface of one of his paintings. The unfinished works by Modigliani, an Italian-born artist who worked in Paris before his death in 1920, came to light after the canvas of Nude with a Hat at the University of Haifa’s Hecht Museum was X-rayed as part of a forensic study of his work for an exhibition in Philadelphia.
MusicInterview'The drum needed a blood sacrifice': the rise of dark Nordic folkDannii LeiversHeilung jam with Siberian shamans and play with human bones, while Wardruna record songs submerged in rivers and on burial mounds. Now this vibrant undergound music scene is finding a wider audience In 2002, holed up in an attic studio on the majestic Norwegian coast, Einar Selvik had a vision. He would create a trilogy of albums based on the 24 runes of the Elder Futhark, the world’s oldest runic alphabet.
Martin Freeman, as Andy in Cargo, has two days to find somebody to take care of his infant daughter, after he is chomped on by his newly turned wife. Photograph: SuppliedMartin Freeman, as Andy in Cargo, has two days to find somebody to take care of his infant daughter, after he is chomped on by his newly turned wife. Photograph: SuppliedMoviesReviewAdelaide film festival: This zombie movie, with soul and pathos, is one of those in which the Z word is never uttered