SwayBlog

Top 10sBooksFrom Roth to Le Guin: top 10 novels about the first world warAuthors such as Virginia Woolf and Pat Barker show how the conflict’s devastating impact carried on long after the 1918 armistice I had not intended to write a first world war novel. But the physician protagonist of my initial project, set in interwar Vienna, needed a backstory. So I sought in it the war and, like countless others before me, found myself drawn into the conflict.

PoetryObituaryHenri ChopinAvant-garde pioneer of sound poetryTowards the end of the second world war, Henri Chopin, who has died aged 85, escaped from a forced labour camp in Olomouc, in what is now the Czech Republic, after it had been bombed. He then spent time with the advancing Red Army, until, recaptured by the Germans, he and inmates of concentration and extermination camps were sent west on a Nazi "death march".

Archaeology This article is more than 10 months oldIt’s not a darning tool, it’s a very naughty toy: Roman dildo foundThis article is more than 10 months oldTwo thousand-year-old object found at Roman fort in Northumberland in 1992 has been reassessed by archaeologists Archaeologists believe they may have found the only known lifesize Roman dildo, discovered in a ditch in what were the farthest northern fringes of the empire. If it was not used as a sexual implement then the 2,000-year-old object may have been an erect penis-shaped pestle, or it could have been a feature from a statue that people touched for good luck.

OpinionPregnancy This article is more than 5 months oldPositive birth stories exist and pregnant women deserve to hear themThis article is more than 5 months oldSophie WalkerWe must never underestimate the power of women’s stories to incite change – all experiences of birthing should be amplified Mothers who have experienced a positive birth often stay silent because they don’t want to gloat. On the flip side, if you’ve ever been pregnant, you’ve likely been a magnet for careless remarks and grief-filled birth recounts.

UK news This article is more than 21 years oldRape scene tests censor's nerveThis article is more than 21 years oldFrench director says he would rather see film banned in the UK than cutBritain's new chief censor, Quentin Thomas, faced his first headache last night when the director of a French film said he would rather the UK banned it than cut it. Irreversible, a bleak epic featuring a nine-minute anal rape sequence and a man having his face pulped with the base of a fire extinguisher, had its UK premiere at the Edinburgh International Film Festival this week, where some film critics walked out of the industry screening.

Victoria BeckhamA model figureReal Lives : She's been dubbed Skeletal Spice - but Victoria Beckham insists she's not too thin. So is she actually underweight and if she is, is it any of our business? Lucy Atkins investigatesFor breakfast I had two bowls of Sugar Puffs," said Posh Spice Victoria Beckham yesterday, countering hurtful tabloid accusations that she's turned into "Skeletal Spice". "For lunch two chicken fillets with loads of vegetables.

Aloha This article is more than 8 years oldCameron Crowe apologises for casting Emma Stone as 'part-Asian' in AlohaThis article is more than 8 years oldOscar-winning film-maker says he is to blame, following accusations of ‘whitewashing’, and promises to heed calls for diversity in future Cameron Crowe has apologised for casting the white actor Emma Stone as a “part-Asian” Hawaiian in controversial “whitewashed” romance Aloha. Crowe addressed the issue on his blog after diversity campaigners took him to task for allegedly failing to recognise that Asian-Pacific Islanders make up the majority of the state’s population.

Formula OneAnalysisF1 disguises Las Vegas snags with sensory overload and raw entertainmentGiles RichardsWhile the event was far from flawless, organisers can be satisfied with a race that lived up to the razzle-dazzle of Sin City The morning after the night before in Las Vegas might so easily have been one of guilt and remorse for Formula One. Instead, as the circuit was being dismantled and the Strip returned to what passes for normality in Sin City on Sunday, F1 could reflect on being one of the lucky few who would leave up on the weekend.

The ObserverFictionReviewA lax approach to plot and character makes this near-future fantasy about a murdered man and his wife only fitfully funny “Now that I’m dead… ” begins the murdered narrator of Steve Toltz’s new book, whose chapters alternate between the afterlife and a near-future Sydney beset by “drone terrorism, nanobot murders, hurricane firestorms and utter global chaos”. The Covid era, known as “the Fattening” (“all that gruelling isolation and silly panic buying and overeating… The only thing we learned was how to hide from deliverymen”), has given way to a new pandemic, K9, spread by dogs.