Darling buds: books, music, theatre and more with spring in their hearts
From Chaucer’s elemental epic to Gnarls Barkley’s alternative take on gospel, our critics suggest popular culture inspired by the return of sunnier skies
A Life of Picasso Volume IV by John Richardson review – demon or deity?
This ingenious final volume of an epic biography illuminates the imagery in the artist’s work during Europe’s war years and his complicated love life
On my radar: Jehnny Beth’s cultural highlights
The Savages frontwoman and actor on her admiration for Cillian Murphy, why she was thrilled by Sex Education and how boxing has kept her body and soul together
Like something from a Kubrick film – the hunt for Britain’s best modern buildings
Author Owen Hatherley set out to find fabulous modern buildings all over Britain, from Aberdeen to Aberystwyth. What did he learn? That every town has one – even Reading
In brief: Constable: A Portrait; Wivenhoe; The Enemy Within – reviews
A revisionist biography of the English landscape painter; a murder mystery in Essex; and an inventive counterfactual detective story
An evil bear, a tinpot Churchill, a vile virus… My sketch show for our times
The Tories won by a landslide, Brexit got done, Covid loomed… and the Observer cartoonist Chris Riddell picked up his pen. Here he tells of his daily ritual
A Life of Picasso: Volume IV by John Richardson review – stranger things
The final volume of biography by Richardson, who died before finishing it, is a thrilling survey of Picasso’s surrealist era
Get off the sofa: music, art and more to summon motivation
From noisy young punks to a tiny word on a ceiling, our critics recommend popular culture to light a fire underneath you
Iconicon by John Grindrod review – Britain transformed
From Thatcher to Brexit – a history of the country through some pretty good buildings and a vast number of awful ones
Astral peaks: music, books, art and more about the majesty of space
From beautiful celestial metaphors to a virtual simulacrum of an entire galaxy, our critics suggest popular culture inspired by the wonders of astronomy
‘I couldn’t face the resentment and rage’: can artistic couples have successful relationships?
From Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath to Philip Roth and Claire Bloom – novelist Charlotte Mendelson on the seething envy within famous partnerships
Top 10 books about suffering artists
From Max Porter’s vision of Francis Bacon’s last days to Heather Clark’s fresh look at Sylvia Plath, these works complicate our understanding of the links between pain and art
Three things with Jane Caro: ‘It’s not the 80s and it never will be again’
In our weekly interview about objects, the writer and commentator tells us about her bag of essentials, and the earrings she amassed in the 80s
How Shirley Hughes explored the dramas of children’s lives in a changing world
The author and illustrator behind the Alfie and Dogger series thrilled parents and grandparents as well as the young, writes former children’s laureate Michael Rosen
Patrick Radden Keefe on exposing the Sackler family’s links to the opioid crisis
The journalist tracked the billionaire arts philanthropists’ role in the OxyContin scandal in his gripping bestseller. He talks about why the bad guys are still getting away with it