Culture

Thank You For The Music: How ABBA became one of the most iconic pop bands the world has ever known

It would have been so easy for ABBA to have been a one-hit wonder. When the Swedish group took the stage during the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest to perform Waterloo – credited in previews as 'The Abba', and conducted by a man dressed as Napoleon – the superstars-to-be looked nervous.

Two minutes and 40 seconds later, the quartet had written themselves into music history. The UK gave...

Pete Townshend: 'I'm not easy to live with ... but we have a good time'

He may be 74, but the creative juices of rock legend Pete Townshend, the songwriting powerhouse and lead guitarist in The Who, are ever-flowing.

The band's founder and rock opera impresario has just wrapped a 29-date symphonic tour in the US, is releasing a new Who album in December – the first in 12 years – and is now working on an opera.

And in between times he has...

Gone but not forgotten: The Berlin Wall 30 years after it fell

It is difficult to fully comprehend the emotion that must have accompanied the fall of the Berlin Wall. On November 9, 1989, the 28-year-old barrier was joyfully dismantled, mostly by members of the public, as East Germans streamed into the West, free to travel for the first time since 1961.

In parts of the city the air was soon filled with the tap-tap-tapping of so-called 'wall...

We've reviewed some of the best new debut novels of 2019

If you're in that in-between phase, waiting impatiently for your favourite established author to release their next tome, or are just on the lookout for a few new writers to bolster your bookcase, look no further.

These debut authors are on the up – get on the same page now...

Devotion by Madeline Stevens (Faber & Faber, £6.99)

Sensual, obsessive, unsettling,...

Mel B: 'I don't think I'll ever give up on love'

Three years on from a traumatic divorce, Mel B is happily single, raising three daughters solo and loving life.

But it's no secret the Spice Girl has been through a lot when it comes to relationships; she's spoken at length about her 10-year marriage to Stephen Belafonte, who she had eight-year-old Madison with; she had 20-year-old Phoenix with first husband Jimmy Gulzar; she's had "...

Everything you need to know about Bernardine Evaristo, the first black woman to win the Booker

British author Bernardine Evaristo has won this year's Booker Prize for her novel Girl, Woman, Other.

It's a big moment in the literary world as it makes Evaristo the first black woman to receive the prize. However, the Booker has come under particular attention this year as the judges have flouted the rules by naming two winners instead of one.

Evaristo shares this year's...

Malala's dad Ziauddin: I brought my daughter up to believe in herself and in equality

As children grow, they need more freedom and less protection from their parents. But giving them that freedom comes with risks.

The risks, however, are not normally as extreme as those faced by Malala Yousafzai, whose campaign to get girls educated in her native Pakistan led to her being shot in the head by a Taliban gunman at the age of 15. Airlifted to the UK for treatment, she...

Five things you need to know about Margaret Atwood's new book The Testaments

It's been more than 30 years since Margaret Atwood released her feminist masterpiece The Handmaid's Tale, a foreboding work of dystopian fiction that's routinely included amongst lists of the best books of the 20th Century.

Now the author has revisited Gilead, with a follow-up: The Testaments – which launched at a packed-out Waterstones Piccadilly at midnight last night.

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