Jean Paul Sartre

The fresh, forceful voice of Frantz Fanon

9 March 2024 9:00 am

The Marxist from Martinique became a rallying figure for anti-colonial movements across the world. But might he have revised his violent message had he lived longer?

‘My attachment to Giacometti grew into the bedrock of my existence’

16 September 2023 9:00 am

Michael Peppiatt has had a lifelong obsession with Alberto Giacometti – and it shows in this perfect biography, says Lynn Barber

The triumph of hope over experience: the Peanuts gang

Comparing Peanuts to existentialism is an insult – to Peanuts

5 January 2019 9:00 am

For the hundredth, possibly the thousandth, time, Lucy van Pelt offers to hold the football for Charlie Brown so he…

Where are the heirs of Zola? The writer photographed in his sumptuous study

Is there no end to books on the ‘end of France’?

21 April 2018 9:00 am

Here is a detail that says a lot. In the French translation of this latest book by the Israeli historian…

Sgt Bowe Bergdahl. Photo: U.S. Army/Getty Images

Serial returns with a story of loyalty, resilience and punishment

30 January 2016 9:00 am

The new season of the Serial podcast (produced by the same team who make This American Life) was launched last…

Repetitive but compelling: Giacometti at the National Portrait Gallery reviewed

24 October 2015 9:00 am

One day in 1938 Alberto Giacometti saw a marvellous sight on his bedroom ceiling. It was ‘a thread like a…

After coming forth in the Tchaikovsky competition, Lucas Debargue is the only competitor anyone is talking about

The real winner in the Tchaikovsky competition is the man who came last

18 July 2015 9:00 am

Lucas Debargue, a 24-year-old French pianist, came fourth in the finale of the Tchaikovsky competition in Moscow on 30 June,…

Flamboyant intellectuals: René Descartes (main picture) and Bernard-Henri Lévy (below), in 1978

Liberty, philosophy and 246 types of cheese

20 June 2015 9:00 am

The French have always favoured grand, elegant abstractions about the human condition, says Ruth Scurr. It’s part of their national identity