This weekend, the cinematic event of the year is released. Ad Astra? Joker? Little Women? Wrong on all counts, alas. We have, for our collective sins as a nation, Downton Abbey: The Movie. We are to be treated to a feature-length account of the upstairs and downstairs travails of the Grantham family, in which we shall find out about the events and vicissitudes of their romantic and personal lives, complete with much heavy-handed humour and occasional picturesque shots of Highclere Castle. The major event that the film revolves around is the visit of George V and Queen Mary to Downton, something treated with the gushing reverence that one might expect from its lordly scriptwriter Julian Fellowes. It is, on balance, enough to make one become a Marxist.
An RA exhibit details attempts to wipe out Ukrainian culture – and what survived
The parallels between the threat to Ukrainian culture in the 1930s and today are unmistakable.