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Standing on the quayside beside the River Rhine, gazing at the happy teenagers swimming in the dark water down below, I wonder where the last forty years have gone. Forty years ago, I was one of those teenage swimmers, swept along by the fierce current through the centre of this ancient city. Now, half a lifetime later, I’m one of the watchers on the shore. No matter. Switzerland’s most stylish city is always full of interest, whether you’re a participant or a spectator, and this week it plays host to the most prestigious art fair in the world. On the face of it, Art Basel sounds like just another boring

When I was younger, I dreamed of being a Jane Austen heroine. Nearly two decades on, in my late twenties, I am living in the guest room of a married older cousin in a leafy suburb of London, house-hunting in the middle of a housing crisis, waiting on a security clearance for a public-sector job, and wending my way through a dizzying array of balls, dinners, and public talks while I wait, observing a long-decaying society in the fullest bloom of its collapse. The 1990s dream of single professional womanhood, complete with uptown apartment, financial independence, and unlimited opportunity has been unmasked as an illusion, while the underlying realities of

Artificial intelligence (AI) has rarely been out of the headlines over recent months, creating foreboding that computers will soon be an existential threat to humanity. Movies have long anticipated this, beginning almost a century ago with Fritz Lang’s dystopian classic Metropolis (1927). Seven years earlier, Czech writer Karel Čapek’s stage play R.U.R. – Rossumovi Univerzální Roboti (Rossum’s Universal Robots) introduced the world to the concept of conscious artificial beings. Here’s a look at artificial intelligence in ten movies: The Forbin Project (1970) Joseph Sargent’s (The Taking of Pelham One Two Three) picture is something of a hidden gem, and could be – as they say – ‘eerily prescient’.  Within minutes

You don’t need to be a genius to know that if you are training for HM The King and HM The Queen, then it would be a shrewd career move to land a Royal Ascot winner for them later this month. This is, of course, the first time that the King and Queen will be having runners at the famous meeting under their new titles. Their trainers know that if they can engineer a winner for the royal duo at Ascot’s five-day event, it will generate hugely positive headlines all over the news and sports pages. I think the King and Queen have at least two first-rate chances of a

With its inbuilt suspense, twists and turns – not to mention its many opportunities for scenery-chewing – the courtroom drama has long been a staple of cinema. Although plots tend to concentrate on capital cases, there are a fair few where reputational damage, corporate malfeasance, freedom of speech, education, religion, sexuality, race, military justice, politics and discrimination drive the proceedings. Here are some of my favourites: Inherit the Wind (1960) I am more interested in the ‘Rock of Ages’ than I am in the age of rocks. Frederic March as Creationist Matthew Harrison Brady Drawing on the real-life 1925 Scopes ‘Monkey’ Trial in the US, Stanley Kramer’s Inherit the Wind