Philip Larkin 

After years of scandal, Philip Larkin finally has a spot in Poets’ Corner

James Underwood
Published: December 2, 2016 9.47am GMT

Philip Larkin, one of English poetry’s most recognisable voices, has been memorialised in Westminster Abbey’s Poets’ Corner.

Emeritus king, Juan Carlos I
 January 2020Photo by JOSÉ OLIVA 

Spain’s emeritus king Juan Carlos I to leave country amid tax haven scandal

The former monarch has told Felipe VI of his "well-considered decision" to move away from Spain after Swiss and Spanish prosecutors opened an investigation into allegations of financial irregularities

English version by Melissa Kitson.

Miguel González

Madrid, August 3 2020

Spain’s emeritus king Juan Carlos I has informed his son, King Felipe VI, of his “well-considered decision to leave Spain,” and his residence at Zarzuela Palace, where he has lived for the last 58 years. The decision comes after Swiss and Spanish prosecutors opened an investigation into bank accounts allegedly held by Juan Carlos in tax havens.

In a letter to his son released by the Royal Household, Juan Carlos writes that due to the “public impact” of the investigation, he has decided to leave Spain in order to enable Felipe VI to act as head of state from a place of “peace and tranquility.”

Stars, sex and scandal: Peter Bradshaw on the best books about Hollywood

Ahead of the Oscars, the Guardian’s film critic shares his favourite books on the dream factory, including David Niven, Zadie Smith and Rose McGowan

Peter Bradshaw
Friday 22 February 2019

T

he Oscars approach in the more thoughtful mood created by #TimesUp. These days the awards are a more subdued hooray for Hollywood, but some of the best books on the industry have always warned of the dream factory’s problematic side. F Scott Fitzgerald’s unfinished novel The Last Tycoon, published in 1941, a year after his death, is a portrait of brilliant young studio chief Monroe Stahr, based on MGM executive Irving Thalberg, a man with control over people’s imaginations – the kind of power Mephistopheles might have promised Faust. Stahr is one of a priestly elite “able to keep the whole equation of pictures in their heads”, Fitzgerald writes. He can comprehend the alchemy of storytelling, spectacle, performance, music, publicity, sex, and deal-making – the mysterious totality of cinema inside and outside the screen’s rectangle. With a flourish of genius, David Thomson took the phrase for the title of his own unmissable history of Hollywood, The Whole Equation.