Robert Duvall was a vigorous and subtle actor who always performed with passion and conviction 

From his steely self-effacing consigliere in The Godfather to his surf-crazed Wagner enthusiast in Apocalypse Now, just to see him on screen made me smile

Peter Bradshaw
Monday 16 February 2026

Robert Duval was a foghorn-voiced bull of pure American  Robert DuvaAmerican virility, and he put energy and heart into the movies for more than 60 years. Just to see him on screen was enough to make me smile. That handsome face and head gave him the look of a Roman emperor from Waxahachie, Texas or a three-star general playing the country music circuit. Duvall was famously bald (the rare roles needing hairpieces always looked artificial on him) and so he looked the same age almost all his acting life: forever in his vigorous fortysomething prime – though often playing figures complicated with tenderness and woundedness.

 

‘Charlie don’t surf!’ … Robert Duvall in Apocalypse Now.Photograph: Allstar/United Artists

Robert Duvall, Apocalypse Now and Godfather star, dies aged 95

From the classic To Kill a Mockingbird to blockbuster Gone in 60 Seconds, the Oscar-winning actor’s films spanned a remarkable range

Andrew Pulver

Monday 16 February 2026

Robert Duvall, the veteran actor who had a string of roles in classic American films including Apocalypse Now, The Godfather, M*A*S*H and To Kill a Mockingbird, has died aged 95.

 

An Interview with Colm Tóibín

BYELEANOR WACHTEL

I first came across the work of Colm Tóibín when I was doing a special series on Ireland for Writers & Company some thirty years ago, and I’ve admired him ever since. At the time, he was one of the country’s best-known journalists and the author of a couple of novels.

The Cubans by Sebastián Wilfredo Moya

 

The Cubans

BYSEBASTIÁN WILFREDO MOYA

I sat in a fluorescently lit makeshift office of an albergue with a woman in a cheetah-print dress, Gucci belt wrapped around her waist, and high heels that kept tap-tapping at the linoleum floor. Her face was steeled before me. I was yet another person asking for her documents and date of birth, where she had been and where she was going. Although she didn’t say much, by the click of her heels against the floor, I knew she was nervous. Her husband stood in the corner with their belongings, gripping the handle of their elephantine suitcase, looking over at her more in the spirit of child to mother than husband to wife. His belt was Gucci too, along with his loafers, but on him I doubted their authenticity.

A Conversation with Leslie Jamison

 

A Conversation with Leslie Jamison

BYMARNI JACKSON

The following conversation took place at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto on September 15, 2025, presented by the Writer’s Trust of Canada in honour of Leslie Jamison’s receipt of the Weston International Award, supported by the Hilary and Galen Weston Foundation.

Marni Jackson: I know there are quite a few writers out there tonight, and I’m pretty sure some of them wake up at four in the morning and think, Who cares what I’m writing? What does a mere book do? It’s so easy to feel helpless as a writer these days because the world is in tatters. How do you keep believing in the value of your work?

Television by Lydia Davis

 

TELEVISION

by Lydia Davis

We have all these favorite shows coming on every evening. They say it will be exciting and it always is.

Conversation in Hotel Lounge by Lydia Davis

 

Lydia Davis

Conversation in Hotel Lounge by Lydia Davis

Two women sit together on the sofa in the hotel lounge, bent over and deep in conversation.  I am walking through, on my way to my room.

First woman, loudly and distinctly:  “I never had fun before!”

I am surprised and intrigued–what a heart-to-heart they are having!  I try to imagine her life up to now.  I try to imagine what she has been experiencing recently, and also the revelation this must be to her–the concept of fun.  My thoughts take just a few seconds.

Second woman, speaking softly, inaudibly:  “[mumble, mumble].”

First woman:  “No, no.  Fun is a Chinese word.  Fun is Mandarin.  It means…a kind of rice noodle.“

***

Lydia Davis is well known for her very short, and very very short, stories. Her latest collection is Can’t and Won’t. She has won many awards for her fiction, including the Man Booker International Prize. Dana Goodyear of The New Yorker has said she is “one of the most original minds in American fiction today.”

NEW FLASH FICTION REVIEW

Our Strangers by Lydia Davis review – miniature short stories

 

Our Strangers by Lydia Davis review – miniature short stories

This article is more than 2 years old

The latest collection from the US author known for her playfulness and brevity has a wintry 

Chris Power
Saturday 11 November 2023

About halfway through Lydia Davis’s latest collection – that is, in the 74th of 144 stories sardined into just 368 pages – a woman shows her husband the story she’s been working on. He doesn’t like it, telling her “there was no beginning, no end, and no plot”. Let’s hope he doesn’t read the other 143.

Lydia Davis

Interview

‘I’m not worried about fame or glory’: Lydia Davis, the author who has refused to sell her book on Amazon

This article is more than 2 years old

The award-winning short story writer talks about her boycott of the world’s biggest marketplace, her love of languages and living with Paul Auster in Paris

Alex Clark

Saturday 30 Septiembre 2023

Lydia Davis is a miniaturist with sizable intentions. Her micro-stories, many just a couple of lines, are constrained in length only; their subject matter might be anything that takes her interest, whether a builder up his ladder, a moment of marital disharmony, a tin of ham or the inevitable approach of death.

Lydia Davis
Paris, 1973

Interview

Lydia Davis: ‘I write it the way I want to write it’

This article is more than 4 years old

The author on flash fiction, translation as a route to creativity, and why we need to prioritise the climate crisis over ‘business as usual with writing’

Anthony Cummins

27 November 2021

Index Entry, the shortest of the very short stories for which the American writer Lydia Davis is best known, runs to just four words: “Christian, I’m not a”. When Davis won the Man Booker International prize in 2013, Ali Smith called her a “daring, excitingly intelligent and often wildly comic writer who reminds you… what words such as economy, precision and originality really mean”.