A holdover from Tony Blair's "Cool Britannia" vision, the New Labour invention has turned its back on what makes art great

Helen Mirren turns 18th-century Russian empress in a new HBO series

Embraced by the Dadaists, surrealists and even Victorians, the art form has proved itself to be a flexible and effective tool

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From museums to expectation-defying feminists, the best podcasts to download this October

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Stereotypes, in-jokes and who has the right to deploy them

Colson Whitehead's novel of racial injustice poleaxes the reader