Charlotte Higgins
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Chief culture writer, The Guardian. Classics nerd. Author of books including GREEK MYTHS, RED THREAD and UNDER ANOTHER SKY.
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Articles by Charlotte Higgins
Don’t rebuild the dam: Ukrainian experts urge Unesco to protect site uncovered by Russian sabotage
On a warm September day, a group of underwater archaeologists and researchers were boiling water for tea on their campfire on the banks of the Dnipro River, tents pitched on the sandy shoreline. They were three weeks into an archaeological expedition of the waters around Khortytsia – a rocky island 12.5km long and 2.5km wide that lies just downstream of the city of Zaporizhzhia, in south-eastern Ukraine. High above the island, a Shahed drone whined on its way.
Don’t rebuild the dam: Ukrainian experts urge Unesco to protect site uncovered by Russian sabotage
Andriy Denysenko, hydroarchaeologist, restorer and senior research fellow at Khortytsia national reserve. Photograph: Julia Kochetova/The Guardian On a warm September day, a group of underwater archaeologists and researchers were boiling water for tea on their campfire on the banks of the Dnipro River, tents pitched on the sandy shoreline.
Incinerated novels and destroyed warehouses: Russia’s war on Ukrainian books
On a Saturday morning in August, Viktor Kruglov, the co-founder and chief executive of the publisher Ranok, was at his headquarters in Kharkiv – the eastern Ukrainian city that, along with Kyiv, is the centre of the country’s publishing and printing industry. Built 15 years ago on the site of a former bread factory, the footprint of the premises is about 10,000 sq metres (107,640ft). Books were stacked 12 metres high on rank after rank of shelves.
Kyiv has become a frontline city - and winter is on the way
It felt like the last day of summer. On a Sunday afternoon in late September, people in Kyiv strolled through the city's botanical gardens, admiring the late-flowering dahlias. Later, the terraces in the Podil area – a neighbourhood full of bars, patisseries and bookshops – filled up with customers in search of a cocktail. The idyll was an illusion. As the day darkened, the air defence began its rumble and boom.
Russian strike on passenger train will not deter Ukraine’s backers, NATO chief says
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‘We are not scared,’ says top EU diplomat after Russian strike on passenger train
Kallas: ‘We should show that we are there for Ukraine and we are not scared off.’ Photograph: Olivier Hoslet/EPA Europe needs to show it will not be “scared off” in supporting Ukraine, the EU’s chief diplomat said, after a Russian drone hit a passenger train on the country’s border with Poland shortly after a convoy of high-level diplomats and former leaders had passed through. European leaders condemned the strikes on Monday.
Train Carrying Ex-CIA Chief Petraeus and Former UK PM May Have Been Target of Russian Strike, Officials Say
ALSO SEE: Russia Hits Passenger Train on Ukraine’s Border With Poland, Just Misses ‘Diplomatic Train’ Ukrainian Railways says former British PM and David Petraeus crossed into Poland shortly before drone attack near border A train carrying Boris Johnson and the former CIA chief David Petraeus may have been the target of a Russian drone strike that hit a train engine near the Poland-Ukraine border, according to Ukrainian Railways.
Train carrying Boris Johnson and ex-CIA chief may have been targeted in Russian strike, officials say
A train carrying Boris Johnson and the former CIA chief David Petraeus may have been the target of a Russian drone strike that hit a train engine near the Poland-Ukraine border, according to Ukrainian Railways. Ukraine's foreign ministerAndrii Sybiha described the attack as “Putin's terror knocking directly on the doors of the EU and Nato”. Overnight attacks across Ukraine involving more than 450 Russian drones and missiles killed at least six people and injured more than 40.
Bayeux tapestrymania has gripped Britain. But what does it say about our own age of war and upheaval?
I have seen the Bayeux tapestry four times since childhood, and loved it on each viewing, for the sheer miracle of its survival and the glorious vividness of its detail. But the fourth time, earlier this week, was different – how could it not be? Tapestrymania has taken hold in London. The textile has been proffered as a diplomatic symbol, the occasion for crowned heads and presidents to mingle and speechify.
Ukrainian Lessons: Art in a Time of War
In Kyiv in late May nearly thirty thousand people attended a book festival. The queue to enter was long, as was the list of events and panel discussions. At times it was difficult to move through the crowds filling the former arsenal building despite its enormous size, and each evening the lawns outside became suitably festival-like, with elegant marquees, strings of fairy lights and eclectic live music from the stage.
It’s not just the Odyssey effect: poetry is booming because it’s the only language for these times of violence and chaos
Matt Damon as Odysseus in The Odyssey. Photograph: Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures/AP The biggest sales of poetry since records began are expected this year. The reason? The movies, of course. UK print sales of The Odyssey increased by 1,400% in the four weeks to 25 July compared with the same period last year. In the US, year-to-date sales of The Odyssey are up 76% so far.
Christopher Nolan has made an Odyssey for our times – by sacrificing the delicious darkness of Homer’s epic
‘The director, as I had hoped, follows the spirit of the original poem’s twisted, coiling structure with his own complex design.’ Photograph: Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures Everyone knows how dumb it is to be this person: the one who mourns the film adaptation of a favourite text because it misses out this scene, or misreads that particularly beloved character, or has a slightly “inauthentic” take on some detail.
To make wine is to believe in the future: The Ukrainians growing grapes on the frontline
Charlotte Higgins and Mariana Matveichuk in Mykolaiv region As winemaker Mykhailo Molchanov pottered about trimming foliage from his vines on a warm early-summer day, his dog Direktor at his heels, it was hard to imagine a more idyllic scene. The Molchanovs' organic vines are planted directly into the richly biodiverse grassland for which southern Ukraine is renowned – hence their label's name, Steppe Wines – amid the silvery feathergrass and wild salvia.
‘More postmodern than ancient’: why the Odyssey is everywhere, from Oz to Westeros
default Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey movie has all the hopes of a summer blockbuster pinned to it, and all the promise – as the trailers have showed – of magnificent effects, shocks and thrills. You will be taken inside the cave of the terrifying one-eyed giant, the Cyclops Polyphemus, who likes to dine on human flesh. You will visit the dim and misty shores of the land of the dead, where no warm-blooded human should ever tread. You will flee the pounding tread of cannibals.
Amid war in Ukraine, the fleeting moments of despair and salvation I witness are what truly tell the story
What was it like? Is the question I am often asked when I return from working in Ukraine , where I have been travelling regularly since 2022. There's an understanding implicit in the question that the answer will not – not quite – lie in the accumulation of reporting. For good reasons the reporter keeps her eyes steady and focused outward, collecting the essential information, conveying it as clearly and smoothly as possible.
Letter from Kyiv: I marvel at how people deal with daily life under Putin’s cruel air war
A woman drinking coffee in her apartment, which was damaged in the night attack on the UNIT.City residential complex in Kyiv. Photograph: Julia Kochetova/The Guardian It was a glorious balmy night, and I was walking home from dinner. I’d just eaten fried red mullet from the Black Sea on a pavement terrace, listening to the cries of the last swifts as darkness crept over the city.
Letter from Kyiv: I marvel at how people deal with daily life under Putin’s cruel air war
Wed, 10 June 2026 at 2:46 pm UTC A woman drinking coffee in her apartment, which was damaged in the night attack on the UNIT.City residential complex in Kyiv.Photograph: Julia Kochetova/The Guardian It was a glorious balmy night, and I was walking home from dinner. I'd just eaten fried red mullet from the Black Sea on a pavement terrace, listening to the cries of the last swifts as darkness crept over the city.
Tears and catharsis as Kyiv premieres opera about Ukrainian children abducted by Russia
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Tears and catharsis as Kyiv premieres opera about Ukrainian children abducted by Russia
Charlotte Higgins and Mariana Matveichuk in Kyiv. Photographs by Julia Kochetova Wed, June 10, 2026 at 4:00 a.m. UTC 6 min read Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Performers take the applause at the premiere at the National Opera of Ukraine in Kyiv.Photograph: Julia Kochetova/The Guardian It was hard to imagine an opera with a subject more potentially traumatic – or cathartic – for the assembled audience.
Tears and catharsis as Kyiv premieres opera about Ukrainian children abducted by Russia
It was hard to imagine an opera with a subject more potentially traumatic – or cathartic – for the assembled audience. The occasion, in the grand and gilded spaces of the National Opera of Ukraine, in Kyiv, was the premiere of excerpts of Mothers of Kherson, an opera about the abduction of Ukrainian children by Russian occupiers – a continuing, raw story of real-life loss and agony. The opera was originally intended to be about the Maidan protests of 2013-14.
Air-raid alerts and frontline memoirs: Kyiv hosts literary festival amid war
Visitors at the Kyiv Book Arsenal were encouraged to donate books to soldiers on the frontline. Photograph: Julia Kochetova/The Guardian It was a literary festival, all right, but if your reference for such things is Hay-on-Wye and Edinburgh, or Melbourne and Sydney, or New York and Washington DC, then at Kyiv Book Arsenal you might think you had slipped through a crack in the universe and landed in an alternative reality. For a start, they were so young, the audience members.
Air-raid alerts and frontline memoirs: Kyiv hosts literary festival amid war
Charlotte Higgins in Kyiv Sun, June 7, 2026 at 9:00 a.m. UTC 7 min read Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google.
Air-raid alerts and frontline memoirs: Kyiv hosts literary festival amid war
It was a literary festival, all right, but if your reference for such things is Hay-on-Wye and Edinburgh, or Melbourne and Sydney, or New York and Washington DC, then at Kyiv Book Arsenal you might think you had slipped through a crack in the universe and landed in an alternative reality. For a start, they were so young, the audience members.
Air-raid alerts and frontline memoirs: Kyiv hosts literary festival amid war
It was a literary festival, all right, but if your reference for such things is Hay-on-Wye and Edinburgh, or Melbourne and Sydney, or New York and Washington DC, then at Kyiv Book Arsenal you might think you had slipped through a crack in the universe and landed in an alternative reality. For a start, they were so young, the audience members.
Kyiv picks up the pieces after another attack by Russia – photo essay
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Kyiv picks up the pieces after another attack by Russia – photo essay
Tue, 2 June 2026 at 5:48 pm UTC The site of the night attack on Unit.City residential complex.Photograph: Julia Kochetova/The Guardian In the northern residential suburb of Vynohradar – a district of modest apartment blocks – residents were quietly and calmly getting on with salvaging, clearing and dealing with what remained of their apartments after Monday night’s massive missile attack on Kyiv. Dozens of rockets and hundreds of drones had been let loose on the city, leaving five people dead.
‘We could hear the roof collapsing’: how Russian missiles devastated Kyiv’s cultural sites
For four years, Vitalina Martynovska and her team had been working on a complete transformation of Kyiv’s National Chornobyl Museum. The new sleek displays were designed to tell a fresh story about the reactor explosion of 26 April 1986 – the most serious nuclear accident in history, a factor that contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union, and an event that continues to shape Ukraine’s identity today.
It wasn’t exactly The Devil Wears Prada, but my time working at Vogue in the 90s was preposterous fun
Meryl Streep as Miranda Priestly and Stanley Tucci as Nigel Kipling in a scene from The Devil Wears Prada 2. Photograph: Macall Polay/20th Century Studios/Shutterstock I didn’t think The Devil Wears Prada 2 would make me cry, but it did. All the fashiony high camp, all the sharp one-liners of the first movie (“By all means, move at a glacial pace, you know how that thrills me”) deliquesce into melancholy for a struggling media industry in the second film.
At the Venice Biennale I saw anger at Russia and Israel – and its leadership pretending everything was fine
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What not to miss at the 2026 Venice Biennale
Lanre Bakare, Charlotte Higgins and Alex Needham FLORENTINA HOLZINGER'S SKINNY DIPPERS She's famous for her extreme performances and Florentina Holzinger upped the ante yet again in Venice with a postapocalyptic pavilion that opened with her suspended upside down from the clappers of a large bell. Inside, there was a woman riding a speedboat in circles, two others suspended at the top of a pole and another sitting entirely submerged in a tank. Oh, and no one was wearing any clothes.
What not to miss at the 2026 Venice Biennale
She’s famous for her extreme performances and Florentina Holzinger upped the ante yet again in Venice with a postapocalyptic pavilion that opened with her suspended upside down from the clappers of a large bell. Inside, there was a woman riding a speedboat in circles, two others suspended at the top of a pole and another sitting entirely submerged in a tank. Oh, and no one was wearing any clothes.
Stick a euro in the slot for the lights! The mesmerising, strictly Venetian works of Lydia Ourahmane
‘I have to be able to see a way for a work to be reabsorbed into the world’ … Ourahmane with her pier.Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian Lydia Ourahmane has been living in Venice this year, in an apartment on the Giudecca with gorgeous views over the lapping, flickering water to the main Venetian island. The British-Algerian artist has been making an exhibition that will open to coincide with the Venice Biennale, the art world’s biggest global gathering.
‘I paint the kind of people I’m attracted to’: Hernan Bas on hiding from the world in Venice
Uncanny … Hernan Bas’s The Visitors at Ca’ Pesaro in Venice.Photograph: Courtesy the artist, Lehmann Maupin, Perrotin and Victoria Miro Hernan Bas has been living in Venice this year, painting tourists. He’s aware of the ironies.
‘It has become a symbol of hope’: the epic journey of Ukraine’s origami deer to the Venice biennale
Zhanna Kadyrova's sculpture arrives at the headquarters of Unesco in Paris, on its way to Venice.Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian On a perfect spring day in Paris, the deer is first visible in the distance, poised between an avenue of just-budding plane trees in the 7th arrondissement. Its head is raised, its body poised. Seen there among the trees, it really could be a wild animal.
Simply divine: the extraordinary supernatural visions of Francisco de Zurbarán
Has Zurbarán put himself in the picture? … The Crucified Christ with a Painter.Photograph: Federico Pérez/© Photographic Archive Museo Nacional del Prado Against an impenetrable black ground, the crucified figure looms pale and shining. There’s almost no colour, beyond the trickle of blood on Christ’s feet from the nails driven through his flesh. His head slumps, and his carefully modelled face is at peace (no agony here).
‘We want people on the edge of their seats’: Royal Opera boss Oliver Mears on the new season – and the controversies of the last
Charlotte Higgins Tue, 14 April 2026 at 5:00 am UTC 7 min read Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. ‘A world of gods and giants, heroes and warrior women – but also profound and poignant human relationship.’ The Royal Opera’s 2026 staging of Wagner’s Siegfried.Photograph: The Royal Opera ©2026 Monika Rittershaus (Photograph: The Royal Opera ©2026 Monika Rittershaus) The morning I meet Oliver Mears, the director of opera at Covent Garden, I’m still walking on air.
The National Year of Reading celebrates the ‘joy’ of books. But let’s not forget they can also be deeply troubling, too
It is the UK’s National Year of Reading. Specifically, this government-led scheme is about “reading for pleasure” and “the joy of reading”. This is not a matter of whimsy. Research has linked reading for pleasure in childhood to a host of positive educational and socioeconomic outcomes. But now – 14 years after the Department for Education, in a more innocent time, commissioned a chunky report on the matter – reading books for pleasure is an activity in crisis.
‘This girl was braver than I was’: Julia Kochetova’s astonishing photographs of war in Ukraine
‘You are trying to breathe, but you can’t’ … a girl at the coffin of two-year-old Anhelina Halych, killed in a Russian strike on Kyiv. Photograph: © Julia Kochetova Julia Kochetova is unlike most of the people who cover Russia’s invasion of Ukraine for the Guardian. The photographer lives in Kyiv; she is Ukrainian. It is her country that is being invaded, her friends who are being killed.
‘Regrets? Number one: smoking. Number two: taking it up the wrong hole’: Tracey Emin on reputation, radical honesty - and Reform
Tracey Emin photographed at home in Margate this month.Photograph: © Juergen Teller There is a long buildup before I get to see Tracey Emin – her two cats, Teacup and Pancake, preceding her like a pair of slinky sentries as she walks into the white-painted basement kitchen of her huge Georgian house in Margate. The lengthy overture is because – though I’ve been invited for noon – Emin is a magnificently late riser.
‘That make-or-break feeling? I love it’: can André de Ridder put ENO back on its feet?
André de Ridder is either brave or stupid. He has accepted the role as the music director of English National Opera – its chief conductor and keeper of its musical flame. He will take up the role formally in 2027. The post has been empty for several anguished years, sparked by Arts Council England’s 2022 announcement that the company would lose all its funding unless it moved out of London.
The Trump-Kennedy Center is another front in the battle for the soul of America
Donald Trump looks down from the presidential box in the Opera House at the Trump-Kennedy Center, Washington, 17 March 2025. Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images A year ago – just a year ago – the Kennedy Center in Washington DC was a world-class centre for the performing arts. It had a resident opera company, respected artistic teams, and a run of the acclaimed musical Hamilton to look forward to.
Trump’s assault on the Smithsonian: ‘The goal is to reframe the entire culture of the US’
A portrait of Donald Trump at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC. Photograph: Pete Kiehart/The Guardian On 30 May last year, Kim Sajet was working in her office in the grandly porticoed National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC. The gallery is one of the most important branches of the Smithsonian Institution, the complex of national museums that, for almost 200 years, has told the story of the nation.
The Hodge report into Arts Council England: ‘Not exactly a ringing endorsement’
Margaret Hodge is proposing to revive a version of the regional arts boards, abolished in 2001. Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty Images The arts in England are underfunded, and were dealt a blow by Covid from which many organisations have not yet recovered. But that has been only part of the story.
‘Nnena Kalu was ready for this - nobody else was’: how her Turner prize victory shook the art world
‘Utterly, properly joyous’ … Nnena Kalu at the Turner prize ceremony.Photograph: James Speakman/PA Media Assignments The morning after the Turner prize ceremony, the winner of the UK’s most prestigious art award, Nnena Kalu, is eating toast and drinking a strong cup of tea. Everyone around her is beaming – only a little the worse for wear after dancing their feet off at the previous night’s party in Bradford, and sinking “a couple of brandies” back at the hotel bar.
Can ceramics be demonic? Edmund de Waal’s obsession with a deeply disturbing Dane
‘Pottery is deep in the human story’ … De Waal in his studio Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian Potter and writer Edmund de Waal, a dark silhouette of neat workwear against the blinding white of his studio, is erupting with thoughts, all of them tumbling out of him at once. He is giving me a tour of the former gun factory on a London industrial estate gently disciplined into architectural calm.
Can ceramics be demonic? Edmund de Waal’s obsession with a deeply disturbing Dane
Potter and writer Edmund de Waal, a dark silhouette of neat workwear against the blinding white of his studio, is erupting with thoughts, all of them tumbling out of him at once. He is giving me a tour of the former gun factory on a London industrial estate gently disciplined into architectural calm. It has work stations for his staff (it’s quite an operation); store rooms; and a main space nearly empty but for some giant black lidded vessels he made in Denmark, as capacious as coffins.
Car bumpers, homemade pies … no weapons allowed: the unstoppable postal service keeping Ukraine going
In a post office 10 miles (15km) from Ukraine’s frontline, in a suburb of the eastern city of Kharkiv, business is brisk on a chilly autumn morning – despite the ballistic missiles that had shaken the city at midnight, lighting up the sky with a false dawn of flames. The customer area is fitted out with phone-charging stations “and a small co-working space, which people can use during blackouts, since we have generators”, says the branch manager, 30-year-old Yaroslav Dobronos.
Washington National Opera may move out of Kennedy Center due to Trump ‘takeover’
A production of Tosca for the Washington National Opera at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC in 2019.Photograph: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images The Washington National Opera (WNO) is considering moving out of the Kennedy Center, the company’s home since the US’s national performing arts center opened in 1971. The possibility has been forced on the company as a result of the “takeover” of the center by Donald Trump, according to WNO artistic director Francesca Zambello.
Wives, mothers, fighters, activists: the millennial women keeping Ukraine going
Ukraine is increasingly a country held together, behind the military lines, by women. Those in their 30s – millennial women born into an independent Ukraine, raised in economic turbulence and thrust into adulthood on the wave of revolution and war – are shouldering huge burdens of responsibility. They are fundraising for the army, or sometimes serving in it. They are running civil society organisations, advocating for their country abroad and becoming activists.
‘I need to do everything now’: the Ukrainian combat medic-turned playwright
Alina Sarnatska’s Military Mama tells the story of an ordinary woman’s experience in the army, tackling motherhood, sexism and mental health problems.Photograph: Oleg Palchyk Eighteen months ago, Alina Sarnatska was serving as a combat medic on Ukraine’s frontline – including in the hellish battle for Bakhmut – and had barely been to the theatre. Six months later, she was preparing to watch the premiere of her first play in Kyiv.
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