Culture

Rivals to The Christophers: the week in rave reviews

Jilly Cooper’s over-the-top TV industry romp returns, and Ian McKellen and Michaela Coel make a bracing artistic double act. Here’s the pick of the week’s culture, taken from the Guardian’s best-rated reviews

What happens when we lose a language?

A staggering 44% of human languages are endangered – with culture, tradition and whole ways of understanding the world at stake

'We feel angry

Thriving punk culture seen as response to frustrations at unemployment, urban violence, police brutality and deprivation

‘In every drop of paint he slurped, you see the Holocaust’: the genius and torments of Georg Baselitz

The German artist lived through Nazism and communism – and his horrific, shaming works, including a masturbating Hitler, forced his country to face its past. Yet in later life, he beautifully captured human frailty, portraying himself and his wife nude

Hey-nonny-bo! The woman reclaiming maypole dancing with dancehall and drum’n’bass

UK artist Linett Kamala was astonished to see a maypole in a Jamaican hamlet – a colonial relic, but one bringing joy. So she reinvented the tradition by ditching English folk tunes and adding bass bins, LED lights and pounding beats

Two Poems by Luis Muñoz

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The First Draft of Cultural History

Lena Dunham’s new memoir is a fascinating primary source of Hollywood in the 2010s.

My month in the tradwife world: ‘I can’t pretend I’m not enjoying myself at all ...’

In the past few months, there has been a boom in tradwife novels, while the accounts of influencers only grow more popular. What is it about this culture that makes it so compelling to young women?

I Swapped England for Seoul After Watching a Korean Teen Drama

I was on the verge of failing Mandarin, when a last-second pivot caused me to utterly fall in love with Korean culture, and send me in a totally new direction

The Stranger review

François Ozon’s adaptation of the 1942 novella L’Etranger passionately honours the original text while bringing a contemporary perspective to its themes of empire and race

How Long Can You Live Your Ideals?

Stories about revolutionaries seem to entrance readers and moviegoers alike—especially if they don’t end well.

The UK’s free-to-access museums are the envy of the world. Charging for entry would be a big mistake

There are better ways to raise money than jeopardising a model that draws visitors to Britain and has huge benefits for the wider economy