The artist was 12 when the Kosovo war destroyed his home, but a chance meeting in a refugee camp led him to document a child’s-eye view of the conflictPetrit Halilaj was 12 years old when Serbian troops moved into his Kosovar village, forcing his famil…
Send us to Coventry! How the Turner Prize and a touring bin put the city on the map
It started with lockdown and a broken angel, but Coventry’s year as city of culture is highlighting its reputation for resilience Shortly before midnight on 23 January 2020, security cameras outside Coventry Cathedral picked up two ghostly figures smas…
The Mirror and the Light review – Cromwell’s spell is finally broken
Gielgud theatre, LondonThe climactic play based on Hilary Mantel’s magisterial trilogy has wit and grace but no great dramatic releaseIt’s a truism all too well known to Thomas Cromwell that history is written by the victors. By the final volume in Hil…
Actor Renu Arora: ‘I saw my leg go under the bus and thought I was dead and gone’
Four years ago, she was involved in a horrific accident. Little did she know it would leave her uniquely prepared to play a noblewoman hit by a falling elephant in the RSC’s new Christmas musicalOne Wednesday evening in March 2017, everything changed f…
I’m finally seeing live shows again – and I feel like a kid in a sweetshop
Kitchen discos and archive performances kept us going – but being stuck at home made me pine for a full houseIn the early months of the pandemic, as the survival instinct of the live arts community performed a macabre two-step with the increasingly gri…
Orford Ness: the apocalyptic art zone at war with nature
UFO sightings, a Nazi invasion, nerve gas trials, unexploded bombs … the strange Suffolk enclave of Orford Ness has always inspired artists, and now it hosts the most unsettling project yet It is one of Britain’s strangest landscapes, a spit of land of…