Arts & Culture
Lead Feature
Invisible cities
In myth, Babylon is a place of romance and wonder, but years of dictatorship and war have taken their toll. Hisham Matar on his attempt to visit the ancient metropolis
Also in arts & culture
The sound of love
The Tunisian vocalist Dhafer Youssef is one of the leaders of an exciting renaissance in Arabic music. A new generation of artists is engaging with both classical tradition and international audiences
Do everything, be everywhere
A new show by Sam Taylor-Wood hints that there may yet be a serious artist hiding behind the celebrity and glamour
Celebrating masochism
The latest James Bond blockbuster is little more than the usual exercise in designer violence, while an astounding portrait of the 1980s IRA hunger strikers takes film into visceral territory
Keeping it real
Steve Lazarides is Banksy's gallerist and the man responsible for the boom in street art. He hasn't sold out - he's just adapted
Return of the tiger woman
The charismatic Jamaican-American singer's first album for 19 years
Grace Jones
Hurricane (Wall of Sound)
More than just the Beatles
Cultured crowds flock to Merseyside, while the people of Madrid occupy themselves in daubing fibre-glass cows
Hope thrives in Rwanda
Hope Azeda and her Mashirika Company are using contemporary performance to help change perceptions of Rwanda, both at home and abroad
More This Week
In Music
Taking on the world
Having conquered France, this Malian duo are closing in on the British market
Welcome to Mali
Amadou and Mariam
In Art
The age of uncertainty
The painters and photographers of the First World War were resolutely on the side of the ordinary soldier. Today, artists have an ambiguous attitude to conflict in the Middle East, and struggle to express its true horrors
In Film
No place like home
Fernando Meirelles has made his name with films inspired by the turmoil in his native Brazil. He tells Rebecca Davies why Hollywood can't compete with this golden age of Latin American cinema
Columnists
Radio
Antonia Quirke
Two musicians take a road trip across eastern Europe - and the result is madness
