Bowie: The Final Act review – moving and enjoyable tribute to music legend’s last stand
Singer’s final decades can’t really be called his creative golden years but there are touching contributions from his collaborators
The Guide #222: From Celebrity Traitors to The Brutalist via Bad Bunny – our roundup of the culture that mattered in 2025
Not exhaustive, not definitive and unapologetically subjective: our annual tour of the best TV, music, films, podcasts, games and books of the last year
What rhymes with la la la, la la la la la? Kevin Killian, the poet obsessed with Kylie Minogue
He wrote poems named after Kylie songs and named his collection of erotic fiction after her indie album. He even loved the B-sides. So what did the avant garde writer find so inspiring about the mini Melbourne marvel?
Lurker to Our Girls: the week in rave reviews
A buzzy thriller about a Hollywood hanger-on and a moving documentary following the parents bereaved in last summer’s Southport attack. Here’s the pick of the week’s culture, taken from the Guardian’s best-rated reviews
Jarvis Cocker and Mary Beard announced as Booker prize judges
The historian is set to lead a ‘stellar’ 2026 panel featuring the Pulp frontman and other acclaimed writers, as the search begins for next year’s standout work of fiction
Five of the best music books of 2025
From an enraging indictment of Spotify to Del Amitri frontman Justin Currie’s account of Parkinson’s and a compelling biography of Tupac Shakur, here are five titles that strike a chord
Ian Marchant obituary
Writer, performer and broadcaster with a talent for being interested in everything and a particular fascination with British counterculture
From The Death of Bunny Munro to Wicked: For Good: the week in rave reviews
Matt Smith is the ultimate bad dad in a Nick Cave novel adaptation, and the Oz prequel musical reaches the end of the road. Here’s the pick of the week’s culture, taken from the Guardian’s best-rated reviews
Christmas Karma review – Dickens adaptation has as much Yuletide spirit as a dead rat in the eggnog
Gurinder Chadha’s leaden update of the hardy seasonal chestnut with Kunal Nayyar is joyless and nausea-inducing
Adele to make acting debut in star-studded Tom Ford movie
The singer will star alongside Adolescence breakout Owen Cooper, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Colin Firth, Thandiwe Newton and Nicholas Hoult in an Anne Rice adaptation
Bread of Angels: A Memoir, by Patti Smith review – a wild ride with the poet of punk
Smith’s incantatory voice shines through in this surprisingly revelatory follow up to Just Kids and M Train
‘Ambition is a punishing sphere for women’: author Maggie Nelson on why Taylor Swift is the Sylvia Plath of her generation
What do Swift and Plath have in common, and should Kamala Harris have spoken out about her political ambitions? The Argonauts author turns her lens on poetry, pop and patriarchy
From the Celebrity Traitors finale to a Margaret Atwood memoir: the week in rave reviews
A truly satisfying climax to the celeb reality show, and the sharp and engaging thoughts of the Handmaid’s Tale author. Here’s the pick of the week’s culture, taken from the Guardian’s best-rated reviews
Wings by Paul McCartney review – a brilliant story of post-Beatles revival
A compelling oral history traces the rise one of the most successful bands of the 70s from the ashes of a creative breakup
Down Cemetery Road to Florence + the Machine: the week in rave reviews
Emma Thompson lights up a new thriller from Slow Horses author Mick Herron, and the singer-songwriter is back with more bombastic chamber pop. Here’s the pick of the week’s culture, taken from the Guardian’s best-rated reviews