Culture

The London Film Festival – like most film festivals – is like a very large bag of treats. In amongst the gala premiers attended by royalty, the Oscar contenders and the experimental films, you need to dig around to find the one piece of 70% chocolate that hits the sweet …

The Bagri London Indian Film Festival brought to the UK a week of independent films from the South-Asian subcontinent.   Now in its eighth year, LIFF has curated exciting new cinema and shaped an audience who support indie films, a genre now more exciting and varied than the standard narrative of …

Since it washed over the planet in early 2017, Ed Sheeran’s infectious and beautiful ‘Shape of You’ has become as much a staple of the music scene as a new food fad – enhanced, added to, fused and turned over innumerable times. The song has been covered as many times …

My 11-year-old swirls his head around as it begins, like a startled fawn down a country road.  The reason’s not the car headlights but the opening notes of the song of 2017, the catchy opening tinkles of Ed Sheeran’s infectious ‘Shape of You’. But then, just like the realization in …

The surprise winners of India’s top flight football league, Aizawl FC have threatened to “fast unto death” after finding themselves in the bizarre position of staring at relegation next season despite winning the title. Based in India’s northeast state of Mizoram, Aizawl pulled off a massive surprise when they upstaged …

“When you left London the East India Company was a trading company,” Tom Hardy’s troubled anti-hero James Delaney is warned in the second episode of the BBC’s prime-time drama Taboo. “Now it is God Almighty.” Discussing the show before it aired, writer Stephen Knight referred to the East India Company …

He may be the subject of worship from London’s Parliament Square to the Oval Office in Washington DC, but Winston Churchill was little more than a mass murderer, with as much blood on his hands as Hitler does. That’s according to the Indian politician and author Shashi Tharoor, whose new …

One of India’s finest screen icons and most visible crusaders for social justice is set to celebrate International Women’s Day in London by bringing her critically acclaimed new play about family, fame, identity and language in the digital age. ‘Broken Images’ is directed by Alyque Padamsee and is adapted from …

An image of a peacock – the national bird of India – was projected on to Buckingham Palace Monday night as Queen Elizabeth officially launched UK India Year of Culture – a celebration of the centuries-old relationship between the world’s oldest democracy and the world’s largest. Superstar Anil Kapoor – …

India’s Hindustan Motors has sold its Ambassador car to France’s Peugeot for just $12 million, capping a spectacular downfall for a vehicle once emblematic of the country’s political class. The CK Birla group, the owners of Hindustan Motors, have sold the car brand for 800 million rupees to the French …