Culture

Under the reign of the free-market icon, state power over universities increased. Vernon Bogdanor assesses Thatcher’s legacy to education

A retrospective of the neglected artist to whom Claude Monet ‘owed everything’ is long overdue, writes Christoph Bode

Entomologist James Logan takes part in a Wellcome Collection series in celebration of the insect kingdom

Duncan Wu savours the cadence and nuance that a superb cast bring to this portrayal of the relationship between art and life

Alexander Massouras on an exhibition of key works pointing to the sculptors’ shared fascination with organic forms

Padraig Kirwan reviews an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery

Migration and the lessons of history inform a cinema with universal appeal, Ewa Mazierska argues

The Roy Lichtenstein retrospective at Tate Modern reveals the seriousness behind the Pop artist’s irony, finds Alex Danchev

Davina Quinlivan looks beyond Hollywood to offbeat indie films’ world of dogs, robots, dolls and true love against the odds

Jeremy MacClancy on the British Museum’s new exhibition linking Ice Age artistry to the Modernists

Daniel Ploeger’s performance provokes minds through ‘body beautiful’

Mary Evans uncovers clues as to why crime fiction appeals to so many but is disregarded by critics of the literary world

Cinematic treatment of the Great Emancipator offers insights into changing attitudes towards the US presidency and the parallels between its 16th and 44th incumbents

TV series dramatising the rise of department stores highlight a turning point in consumer culture, as entrepreneurs seduced female shoppers into becoming part of the bourgeois set

A documentary about a Japanese Michelin-starred perfectionist has tasty titbits but not enough meat for Barak Kushner’s taste

Matthew Reisz reports on the bursaries helping ex-thespians to pursue higher education goals

The archives of an apartheid-era arts centre shed light on creative as well as political forces, writes Matthew Reisz from Cape Town

The once ‘unfilmable’ story of a boy and a tiger stranded together on a lifeboat contains flashes of 3D genius but ultimately proves too tame for Will Brooker

As the Queensland Art Gallery celebrates 20 years of its Asia Pacific Triennials, Peter Hill explores the latest edition of a remarkably pan-national affair

Duncan Wu is amused by a frenzied bagatelle full of violence, political incorrectness and comic fury, signifying…itself, mostly

An exhibition foregrounds the people of Dresden and their many and contradictory stories rather than their historical tragedy, discovers Ulrike Zitzlsperger

The 50th anniversary re-release of Lawrence of Arabia allows us to reassess cinema’s sensual relationship with the desert, Davina Quinlivan writes

The V&A’s reflective new exhibition of Middle Eastern photography brings a heterogeneous region into focus, says Shahidha Bari

John Bunyan’s masterwork, which influenced literature, politics and culture for generations, is startlingly modern in depicting a world of greed and inequality

The story of a black actor on the Victorian stage raises questions about race and racism in today's theatre, argues Peter J.Smith

Filled with treasures from around the globe and across the ages, England’s university museums are as varied as their funding, but those of Oxford and Cambridge still take the lion’s share of Hefce cash. Matthew Reisz on the changing roles of these repositories of knowledge

Korean horror may draw Western attention for its brutality, but its focus on sacrifice and expiation is distinctive, says Daniel Martin

Duncan Wu admires (with some caveats) a synecdochal exploration of family, loss and the end times’ bitter waters

The Inside Out festival aims to fling open the doors of the academy and allow scholars’ work to roam free in London and engage with its many publics, writes Matthew Reisz

Animated films aren’t just for children, argues James Clarke. They’re lyrical metaphors for the richness of human existence

A violent, drug-addled reworking of Star Wars is an authentic work by a controversial auteur but lacks the bite of his earlier films, argues Duncan Wu

Merseyside is the perfect setting for an exhibition that explores departure points, national identity and the fluid nature of ‘British art’, finds Alexander Massouras

The Fifty Shades phenomenon has spawned academic debate, scholarly parodies and now an erotic trilogy starring a dark, brooding, sensual...lecturer. Matthew Reisz reveals all

TV detective shows express a great deal about the nature of society and the human psyche, argues Gary Day

Marisa Carnesky’s new theatrical homage to the carnivalesque is a divinely divinatory affair, Roberta Mock discovers

Even more fascinating than the con artists who assume others’ identities are the people who are desperate to believe them, suggests Rohan McWilliam

With political dramas proving to be big draws, Matthew Morrison assesses the radicalism of playwrights and audiences

Rain is a national obsession - never more than in British films. James Clarke reveals what happens when the heavens open

A season dedicated to the UK’s greatest film-maker shows that there is more to his sensibility than misogyny, Davina Quinlivan argues

Peter J. Smith on a fresh view of the Bard via the prism of materiality and the playwright’s own socio-historical moment

Batman’s true superpower is to reflect the dark side of human nature. Will Brooker asks if he’s really the protector we deserve

Raphael Lyne on the shape-shifting fascination to be found in the meeting of Greek myth, Roman and modern British verse and Titian’s indelible hues

From the swinging Sixties of Shrimpton and the Krays to the 2012 Games, David Bailey’s eye captures ever-mutable London

Later works, photographic ones in particular, redefine the creator of The Scream as a 20th-century artist, observes Alex Danchev

An exhibition showcasing five decades of Yoko Ono’s work downplays her dark side in favour of more uplifting, regenerative themes, finds Helena Reckitt

Street life, dazzling dress, social commentary and a riot of sensuous colour interweave in a rich assembly of West African art, writes Charles Gore

Jane's brilliance, John Mullan tells Matthew Reisz, lies not only in her insights and keen eye for detail, but also in an uncanny ability to make her readers feel every bit as clever as her

Three decades after confronting our anxieties about reproduction in Alien, Sir Ridley Scott returns to the universe of his classic sci-fi horror film. Davina Quinlivan considers the franchise and shows that in nightmares, no one can hear you scream

Art chronicles the myriad roles horses have played in our history, but it’s blinkered to see them just as a resource, says Elaine Walker

The Ashmolean’s new show recreates the artistic journey of an 18th-century Grand Tour. Daniel Carey enjoys the ride

Using words to reflect and create our experience of landscapes, and vice versa, is a powerful ruse. Leo Mellor admires the view

The Bauhaus school is getting a retrospective in London, after a gap of more than 40 years. Alexander Massouras writes

Alison Oram on a tale of two very different 19th-century women who lived as men: the charming butch and the fragile androgyne

There’s more to the ancient world than dusty toff-on-toff talk, ‘professor of bloody Classics’ tells Matthew Reisz

Peter Hill is awed by an exhibition of indigenous Australian art that combines the hypnotically beautiful with the deeply primal

By foregrounding naked ambition, this exhibition allows some more nuanced shadings to fade away, finds Jordan Vibert

Hugh Cunningham ponders our enduring nostalgia for childhoods past and asks if we still yearn for a Romantic ideal

Are the curiosities of dress of various native peoples really so different from those of today’s London ‘tribes’, asks Matt Lodder

Discussion of the merits of paired works used to be a sociable pastime. Has the fashion for chronological museology narrowed our experience, asks Sheila McTighe

An immigrant artist's wanderlust propelled him to Britain, where his work was compared to Hogarth's, notes Emma Barker