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Culture

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Entertainment

Russell Brand books withdrawn by UK publishers after his conviction for rape and sexual assault

Pan Macmillan and Hodder & Stoughton have both confirmed that work by the comedian and writer will be pulled, and other publishers’ books are no longer available Two major British publishers have confirmed they have pulled Russell Brand’s books from sale after he was convicted of rape and sexual assault. The comedian and author, 51, was found guilty at Southwark crown court on Thursday of one count of rape and three counts of sexual assault involving four women. He was cleared of two further counts of rape and one count of attempted indecent assault. Continue reading...

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‘He left the world in ruins’: the author who defied the Taliban and burning tyres to tell Alexander the Great’s epic story

He is the most powerful ruler ever – and his first biographer was crucified. What drew Edmund Richardson, winner of the £50,000 Baillie Gifford prize, to his short tumultuous life? He was the most powerful man in the world but he was brought down by one battle too many after a decade at the top. The story of Alexander the Great might be more than 2,000 years old, but it seems timely that a new biography of the ancient ruler won the Baillie Gifford prize for nonfiction just as President Trump took a battering in the US midterms. “This is a moment,” says its author Edmund Richardson, “where peop

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Marilyn Monroe is a magnetic misfit in Speculations, a spicy conspiracy drama full of bombshells

Marylebone theatre, London Trevor Nunn directs Torben Betts’s intriguing but flawed play following US journalist Dorothy Kilgallen’s theories about the Kennedys A smartly dressed woman hammers away at an old-style typewriter in a drawing room. She is the real-life American journalist and conspiracy theorist Dorothy Kilgallen (Janie Dee) and bears the gimlet-eyed look of Angela Lansbury in Murder, She Wrote. Torben Betts’s play could be called Marilyn, She Wrote. It is the 1960s, Marilyn Monroe has been found dead in her bed and Kilgallen thinks both John F Kennedy and his brother Robert F Kenn

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Spice Girls: The Singles Collection review – stop fleecing your fans right now, thank you very much

(Virgin) The reunion that fans were hoping for turns out to be a cash-grab box set – though there is a worthwhile curio featuring Posh on lead vocals Is there a more taunted fanbase than that of the Spice Girls? Seemingly every other week a story – usually perpetuated by Mel B, the band’s number one cheerleader – appears in the tabloids hinting at some sort of reunion. Or film. Or documentary. Swift denials then emerge, typically linked to Geri or Victoria, and all is calm until a week or so later. So when teasers showing landmarks from 1996’s Wannabe video suddenly appeared on the band’s offi

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‘I went into a deep, deep hole’: Wynonna Judd on overcoming family tragedy and putting a lifetime of love and pain into her new album

The country star has abandoned Nashville slickness for a set of raw, pared-back songs that reckon with the death of her mother and decades of personal struggles. ‘This is a labour of love,’ she says When Wynonna Judd appears on my laptop screen – hair a deep shade of crimson, makeup perfect and sporting a huge black baseball cap with Kentucky Queen spelt out across its brim – she looks both fabulous and confident. Which is a good thing, as the Nashville star has been off the radar for a decade. On the occasions her name has made the news, it’s more often been linked to family tragedy than musi

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‘I’m never going to be bloody Robert De Niro!’: Rob Brydon, the most chipper man on TV

The nicest man in acting is back with new comedy, Bill’s Included. He talks about rejecting Hollywood, refusing to play a villain – and why he just can’t make fun of Steve Coogan ‘I’m a nice person, you know,” says Rob Brydon, as I met him in a basement green room of the BBC, where probably nobody with such a mellow ego has ever sat. “I am a people-pleaser. That’s who I am.” It’s an unnecessary clarification – at 61, he’s been nice on TV, as himself and in character, for most of our adult lives. We’re here to talk about his new six-parter, Bill’s Included, but his character in it, the eponymou

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The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time has revived the midnight game launch – but was it worth the wait?

When our writer found himself among the hundreds on Oxford Street hoping to get their hands on early copies and collectibles, it was a heartwarming reminder of the shared experience of fandom • The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time review – a dream come true It is Thursday night and I am sat blurry-eyed and runny nosed outside the Argos on Oxford Street. Incredibly, I am far from alone. This is not some strange protest against the popular retailer. When the clock strikes midnight, the lavish 4K Switch 2 remake of beloved N64 classic The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time will be released, and I h

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Entertainment

‘Completely original’ musical Midnight tries (and fails) to imagine a slavery-era romance

Todrick Hall’s off-Broadway show is about a doomed interracial love affair during US slavery in the 1860s During the intermission of Midnight, an off-Broadway musical about a doomed interracial love affair during US slavery in the 1860s, a woman sitting behind me lauded the show and compared it to Hamilton. On the surface, she was correct. Midnight also has a diverse cast with stunning vocals and a story that reimagines a time within American history. The difference, however, is that Hamilton’s creator, Lin-Manuel Miranda, used source material – a 2004 biography on Alexander Hamilton by Ron Ch

The Guardian
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Entertainment

Identity, resilience and community: early Black portrait photography – in pictures

A new Washington DC exhibition aims to show how African Americans have used portrait photography to depict themselves, their communities, their aspirations and their identities. Titled Remember Me: Picturing African Americans in Early Photography, the exhibit at the National Gallery of Art features 70 works from the museum’s archives by African American photographers and portrait subjects, tracing the evolution of photography in Black communities. The show opens on 7 November and runs until 14 March 2027 Continue reading...

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Rocky review – 50 years on, Stallone’s boxer remains an exhilaratingly gritty contender

The actor’s triumphant breakthrough has clear ancestors in grimy tales of working-class struggle, but finds a fresh, rousing idealism Peter Farrelly’s new film I Play Rocky is about the underdog-with-heart story of how a great boxing movie got made against the odds with its plucky young untried screenwriter allowed to star. So here is a reissue of that 1976 film for its 50th anniversary. It’s a forthright, rousingly idealistic film, wholesome in its essential patriotism, and which unselfconsciously shrugs off the boxing-movie’s gloomy generic inheritance, throwing away its grim traditional bag

The Guardian
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Nikita Gill: ‘I read Flowers in the Attic too young. Someone should have stopped me’

The Indian-Irish poet on the Mahabharata retelling that inspired her to write, Arundhati Roy’s courage, and the poetry of Lucille Clifton My earliest reading memory My father was a sailor and my mother a teacher. They were both voracious readers. I was lucky enough to come from a home full of books and when we joined my father out at sea for extended periods of time, my mother carried plenty of books for me to read. I remember sitting by the porthole in our cabin, looking out at the sea on a sunny day, the ship moving calmly through the waters. I was reading The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix

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‘Mom encouraged me to get breast implants’: Disney child star Christy Carlson Romano on fame, family and freedom

She started acting at six and by 16 was starring in Even Stevens with Shia LaBeouf. Then her career fell apart. Here, she explains how she survived growing up in the spotlight In a class at college, Christy Carlson Romano was encouraged to think about her “community”. Who were their people, the tutor asked the class, and where did they belong? The answer that popped into Carlson Romano’s head was child actors, but not the ones that went on to have successful grown-up careers. “The ones who were once the shining stars,” she writes in her memoir, “and who are now just trying to find out their pl

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