Last modified on Mon 15 Feb 2021 08.33 EST
Tomorrow is 100 years since the birth of John Graham, known to Guardian solvers for 55 years as Araucaria – the name of the genus to which the monkey puzzle tree belongs.
If you can’t wait until then to mark the occasion, today’s post is a collection of three “lost” Araucarias.
First, a jumbo from Christmas Eve 1990. It has across clues; it has down clues; it has a third kind, too, and we are told:
solutions to the Alphabet clues are to be placed in the unnumbered spaces, to fit in with the message.
John Graham made such a fantastic contribution to the cultural heritage. His holiday specials in particular deserve the highest praise, from shipping forecast maps and ‘bob doubles’ to Christmas messages running round the outside of a giant grid. Heartfelt goodbye to a sweet and lovely man.
Behind Belarus shocking statistics are real people
There are 187 political prisoners in Belarus. Each of them is a real person, with a family and a life
22 Jan 2021
BY RUTH SMEETH
Last week one of our former colleagues and correspondents – Andrei Aliaksandrau – was detained in Belarus. Our friend, colleague and human rights defender is now being arbitrarily held for defending the right to free expression.
Our team is anxious for news and, honestly, even though we report on and cover attacks on journalists every day and campaign for people to be released from prison, we still feel impotent about what we can do to help.
Posted on Wednesday, January 13th, 2021 by /Film Staff
Every year, the /Film team gathers to do what all websites must: make a big list about the previous year in cinema. And while 2020 offered its fair share of numbing, painful roadblocks, the movies were as good as ever, even as we watched them at home instead of at a movie theater. So compiling a list of the
50 Greatest Movie Moments of 2020 was hard not because there weren’t any great moments, but because there were so many.
Here are our favorite moments – shots, scenes, lines of dialogue, gags, asides, action scenes, you name it – from the movies of 2020.
Updated: December 13, 2020 8:39:34 am
The Personal History of David Copperfield hit cinema halls on Friday.
The Personal History of David Copperfield movie cast: Dev Patel, Tilda Swinton, Aneurin Barnard, Peter Capaldi, Morfydd Clark, Daisy May Cooper, Rosalind Eleazar, Hugh Lawrie, Ben Whishaw, Jairaj Varsani, Bronagh Gallagher
The Personal History of David Copperfield movie director: Armando Iannucci
The Personal History of David Copperfield movie rating: Three and a half stars
‘David Copperfield’, Charles Dickens’ eighth novel, is a universal favourite. In Iannucci’s candy-coloured version, with its sparing use of Dickensian dourness, and darkness, we get a perfect David for these uncertain times. Both as the young ‘un (Varsani) who has to deal with a cruel step-father, as well as the adolescent (Patel) facing a long period of brutal hard work, the essential optimism of David, boy to man, is always in evidence.