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'The Crown' offers some valuable life lessons 

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'The Crown' offers some valuable life lessons 

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'the crown' offers some valuable life lessons  - cnn

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Analysis: 'The Crown' offers some valuable life lessons

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Americans may have earned independence from the Brits in 1776, but some things we can't let go of. "The Crown" appeals to our fascination with the British royal family.

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The L.A. Times is a leading source of breaking news, entertainment, sports, politics, and more for Southern California and the world.

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Apropos of Nothing by Woody Allen review – a life and an accusation 

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Apropos of Nothing by Woody Allen review – a life and an accusation 

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In this memoir, Woody Allen is keen to clear up some misconceptions. He is not, as he has frequently been described, an intellectual. As a man who is practically "illiterate and uninterested in all things scholarly", he dismisses the notion as being as "phony as the Loch Ness Monster". He also explains that, contrary to appearances, he is no slouch on the sports field. In his youth he was a fast runner, "very fine" at baseball and a decent schoolyard basketball player who could also "catch a football and throw it a mile".

Allen, 84, also wants it to be known that he is not a child molester, as claimed by his former partner, the actor Mia Farrow, and his alleged victim, their seven-year-old adopted daughter, Dylan Farrow, who is now 34. Throughout this complicated saga, which erupted in 1992, and was reignited in 2014 when Dylan wrote an open letter reasserting the alleged assault, many have had their say on the matter. Along with Dylan's letter, there have been public missives from Allen's son Ronan (who has stood firmly with his sister), Mia's adopted son Moses (who has taken Allen's side and whose letter is extensively quoted here), and Soon-Yi Previn (Mia and her ex-husband André Previn's adopted daughter, who had an affair with Allen and later married him). Police investigators have twice found no legal case against Allen, a fact that is sometimes forgotten amid the public rush to judgment. While Allen quips that the main theme of Apropos of Nothing - which was controversially binned by its original publisher, Hachette, after staff staged a walkout - is "man's search for god in a pointless, violent universe", the 90-odd pages devoted to the Farrow "to-do" would suggest that, after remaining mostly quiet on the subject for 30 years, he has deemed it time to offer his version of events.

Of course, this is the story of a life, not just an accusation, and, as one might expect from a writer with his comic pedigree, Allen's style is gossipy and spry when dealing with his childhood and rise to fame. It begins with a sprint through his early years in Brooklyn as the son of a cab driver father and bookkeeper mother. His parents "disagreed on every single issue except Hitler and my report cards", but they doted on their two children. Cultural awakening arrived via his cousin Rita, who would take him to the movies on Saturday afternoons and encouraged him to listen to the radio where he discovered Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hart, Benny Goodman and Billie Holiday. At 11, a trip to Manhattan with a childhood friend opened his eyes to vaudeville after they found the cinema closed. He was so taken with the comedy skits that he returned every Saturday, taking a pencil and paper to make notes.

While still at high school, he began sending jokes off to newspapers, many of which were printed. Eventually an agent got in touch and asked him to spend a few hours each day after school writing one-liners for their celebrity clients, for which they would take the credit. He went to NYU, majoring in film, but was kicked out after he failed to show up to classes. No matter, as he was already working in comedy writers' rooms and making more money than his parents did. He decided to change his name (he was born Allan Konigsberg), something he never regretted aside from the time a saleswoman at Bloomingdale's asked: "Will that be all, Mr Woodpecker?"

Self-deprecation is Allen's default setting and his bleak humour can be winning. He recalls drunkenly daydreaming with his second wife, Louise, about their preferred method of suicide - "Her preference was to go by pistol shot, mine by placing my head in the dishwasher and pressing Full Cycle." Looking back on the biggest flop of his film career, he says: "The filming of Shadows and Fog came off without a hitch except for the movie." When the lights went up after the screening for the film's financial backers "the four or five suits sat immobile as if they had all been paralysed by curare".

Allen routinely plays down his talents, but wastes no opportunity to list the luminaries who have showered him in praise

Elsewhere, however, egotism tramples wit. He routinely plays down his talents, and wants us to know how little his films returned at the box office, but wastes no opportunity to list the luminaries who have showered him in praise. It's also a familiar Allen routine to wonder why any woman would give him, a self-anointed schlemiel, the time of day romantically, but here they are rated ruthlessly on their looks. Even his mother doesn't escape judgment - she was "loving and decent but not, let us say, physically prepossessing", he writes, before observing her similarity to Groucho Marx.

You might think that a man dogged by dark accusations would take extra pains to avoid coming over like a creep around young women. Yet 17-year-old Stacey Nelkin, who appeared in , and who the 42-year-old Allen briefly dated, caused him and the screenwriter Marshall Brickman "to spin around each other like electrons". Talking about Scarlett Johansson, he observes "when you meet her you have to fight your way through the pheromones. Not only was she gifted and beautiful, but sexually she was radioactive." He carps that much has been made of his dating much younger girls when "it's really not so", offering as evidence his first wife, Harlene, who was just three years younger than him. Given he was 20 when they married, it would have been a grave matter had the age gap been any wider.

Aged 56, apparently marooned in a chilly relationship with Farrow, he says he was "ripe for the plucking" when he began an affair with the 21-year-old Soon-Yi; his revelation that "we couldn't keep our hands of each other" is, frankly, too much information when discussing a woman who was, to all intents and purposes, his stepdaughter. His account of the fall-out, and the subsequent accusations regarding Dylan, pinballs between sadness and fury. He is sympathetic towards Dylan, whom he claims was coached and "brainwashed" by her mother into believing that, one afternoon in the crawl-space in their Connecticut home, her father abused her while she lay playing with trains.

He is less forgiving towards his son, Ronan, from whom he has long been estranged and who has written extensively about his father's alleged misdeeds. Another sub-plot in the eternal Farrow soap opera is the question mark over Ronan's paternity, and Allen can't resist making a dig about the child support he was legally obliged to pay: "If Mia was right about [Ronan] being the son of Frank Sinatra, then I was really being bilked." But he saves most of his vitriol for Mia, whom he claims told him: "You took my daughter, now I'll take yours." He paints her as bitter, damaged and cruel, a woman who shopped for adopted children as if she were collecting ornaments, and then neglected and physically abused them. It makes for grim reading. While you can't blame him for putting his point across forcefully, and for howling against perceived injustices, the spiteful tone helps no one.

But Allen isn't in it to win friends, as evidenced by intermittent rants against the "Appropriate Police", the "#MeToo zealots" and his former friends and colleagues in Hollywood who, after gauging the public mood, have publicly denounced him. He makes clear his understanding that the book is unlikely to influence those who have already made up their minds. Reflecting on his legacy, he says: "Rather than live in the hearts and mind of the public, I prefer to live on in my apartment."

* Apropos of Nothing by Woody Allen is published by Arcade.
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Apropos of Nothing by Woody Allen review - a life and an accusation

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In this memoir, Woody Allen is keen to clear up some misconceptions. He is not, as he has frequently been described, an intellectual. As a man who is practically "illiterate and uninterested in all things scholarly", he dismisses the notion as being as "phony as the Loch Ness Monster".

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Opinion: Biden in, Trump out. Try to imagine Inauguration Day 

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Opinion: Biden in, Trump out. Try to imagine Inauguration Day 

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On March 4, 1933, an open-top car with Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the back seat entered the north gate of the White House, part of a small motorcade ferrying the president-elect two miles to the Capitol Building for his inauguration.

The vehicles came to a halt near the portico and after a few moments, President Herbert Hoover and his wife exited what had been their home for the previous four years and advanced to separate cars, Hoover stepping into the seat next to Roosevelt, where the men shared a handshake and a terse greeting then rode off in mostly stiff silence for the swearing-in of the new president.

It was among the iciest transitions of power in U.S. history. The coming Jan. 20 may do it one better. In fact, it wouldn't be surprising if President Trump - who is as sore a loser as he is ungracious a winner - makes like President Andrew Johnson and skips Biden's inauguration. That wouldn't be a bad thing for the country, either, despite the predictable handwringing over yet another tradition defied. Out of sight, out of mind - though it's hard to imagine Trump staying out of sight - or out of earshot - for long.

If we've learned anything about our 45th president, it's that he craves the spotlight like a drug. Sitting quietly among the dignitaries as Biden places his hand on the Bible and swears to uphold the Constitution would undoubtedly make Trump squirm. Will he do it? Sit quietly and not interrupt? Or will he slip off to Mar-A-Lago and lob tweets from afar as the nation moves forward, finally, without him?

Who knows?

Meanwhile, according to a report from the White House press pool, sounds from preparations for the inaugural parade can be heard inside the White House as workers install fencing and erect bleachers. For Trump, each clang of a hammer on metal must sound like the clock ticking down the days of his presidency.

Trump's legal flailings over vote counts have drawn a lot of attention, with the demarcation line somewhere between "let him pursue his legal options" and "he's undermining faith in the electoral process." But there also are reports that he recognizes that he lost the election, which seems plausible. It's not likely that after a long business career, Trump doesn't know how to count.

But it's not in his nature to cede ground in a fight, and he has said that he doesn't lose very well. Hence the flood of lies, the tweets and retweets of conspiracy-based observations. Is he wandering the White House like Richard Nixon on the eve of his resignation, reeling and talking to the portraits?

That's doubtful. Besides, he's been plenty busy in recent days firing appointees deemed not sufficiently loyal, raising money and solidifying support among his still-dedicated followers, luring them into embracing a false perception that somehow some great vast conspiracy stripped him - and them - of the presidency.

The nation will see a display of that in Washington this weekend as a range of Trump-supporting organizations plan demonstrations for Saturday morning under such slogans as "Million MAGA March" and "Stop the Steal," a reference to the false claim that Democrats are perpetrating election fraud on a massive scale. And, of course, there will be counterdemonstrations.

But in the end it's certain that Trump will go. Whether he goes graciously with his head held high, stomps off to sulk, and is dragged out - well, that's up to him.

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Opinion: Biden in, Trump out. Try to imagine Inauguration Day

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On March 4, 1933, an open-top car with Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the back seat entered the north gate of the White House, part of a small motorcade ferrying the president-elect two miles to the Capitol Building for his inauguration.

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The first reports of a new virus emerging in Wuhan came around Christmas 2019. By early January, there were 27 cases in the Chinese city. Within a couple of weeks, airports in Asia were screening all passengers who passed through their doors. Weeks on, UK airports still were not - despite three direct flights a week from Wuhan to Heathrow.

Screening is ineffective as a method to stop the spread of a virus such as Covid-19, said one scientist.

We should have done it at least for the Wuhan flights, said another. "It wouldn't have been a great imposition."

"We left our doors open," said a public health expert, with barely controlled fury. "And it contributed substantially to the rapid growth of the virus in the UK."

Such a back and forth was the defining feature of BBC Two's Lockdown 1.0: Following the Science? It is the latest contribution to what I suspect will become a string of more-or-less excellent documentaries about the UK's handling of the coronavirus pandemic. (The first was Channel 4's The Country That Beat the Virus, which compared and contrasted South Korea's response to the advent of Covid with ours - no spoilers, but we don't come out of it well.)

Lockdown 1.0 also intertwined, though less overtly, two narratives. One involved the evolving amount and quality of the data that the scientists - modellers, virologists, epidemiologists - were receiving and, therefore, the predictions and other information they could obtain from it and hand on to groups such as the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) and then to government ministers. The other narrative strand involved those ministers and what Professor Anthony Costello, a former director of maternal, child and adolescent health at the World Health Organization, described as "the managerial issue - how to test, how to gather the results, how to lock down, how to trace, how to isolate, and how to scale all that up - quickly". Again, no spoilers but ...

What we might call, in bleak reference to earlier, happier, altogether easier times, "the science bit" was perhaps the more illuminating. The managerial issue is generally writ larger on our screens and in our newspapers as it is happening. The beavering away with numbers and in laboratories, less so. The science bit, perhaps tellingly, was also where most of the back-and-forth took place. The managerial response did not admit much nuance.

There was evident frustration, for example, among many of the modellers who comprised the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (SPI-M) about the fact that only Imperial College - as an established collaborative centre with the WHO - had access to what was, at the beginning, the best (though by no means perfect) data, coming out of China. Dr Ian Hall from Manchester University, deputy chair of SPI-M, noted: "The public may be surprised to hear we were using data from Wikipedia very early on - but it really was the only data publicly available."

Juxtaposed with them was Professor Graham Medley of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and chair of SPI-M. "It's not as simple as saying: 'Make it all publicly available.' People own it; it includes patient information."

Costello professed himself "pretty shocked" by the situation. The whole point of science and scientists in these circumstances, he said, was to share findings openly.

There were many more moments and insights that complicated - in a good way, by giving more detail, by exposing more structures, by expanding vistas - the view we take from headlines, social media or, if we are committed, articles. The uncomfortable truth is that there are often no good choices, and that it can be irremediably unclear which choice is the best of a bad lot. Likewise, the bitter fact is that people cannot always be made to follow the best paths and, therefore, impositions on them must be watered down if they are to have any effect.

The data scientists made the nearest thing to an unequivocal error with the modelling they did around the risk in care homes, by failing to understand the movement of staff between homes. Should they have known about agency workers? If not, who should have told them?

Still, we are not yet at the stage of apportioning blame - although there will surely be many documentaries to come that will deal with exactly that. By the end of this one, it was possible to feel both better and worse about the state we are in. There are people out there, definitely, who have our ignorant little backs. But the search for an overarching synthesising intelligence - some kind of "prime" minister who could gather up all the reins, say - continues.
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Lockdown 1.0: Following the Science? review - Wikipedia, Wuhan and worrying mistakes

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The first reports of a new virus emerging in Wuhan came around Christmas 2019. By early January, there were 27 cases in the Chinese city. Within a couple of weeks, airports in Asia were screening all passengers who passed through their doors.

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August 30 premiere on Netflix

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Read one of the  writer's verdicts and comment on it

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How should this Brexit crisis be fixed? Our writers' verdicts | Matthew d'Ancona and others

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Matthew d'Ancona, Katy Balls, Aditya Chakrabortty and Gaby Hinsliff look at what should be done after a night of Westminster drama

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Were you the favorite child, the wild child or the middle child? Jeffrey Kluger explores the profound life-long bond between brothers and sisters, and the influence of birth order, favoritism and sibling rivalry.

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Were you the favorite child, the wild child or the middle child? Jeffrey Kluger explores the profound life-long bond between brothers and sisters, and the influence of birth order, favoritism and sibling rivalry.

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Exiled: the disturbing story of a citizen made unBritish

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Exiled: the disturbing story of a citizen made unBritish | Kamila Shamsie

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How can a government exile its citizens without a trial? Why can people born in Britain be forced to leave? Kamila Shamsie explores how citizenship became a privilege, not a right

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James Cameron's big-budget (and even bigger-grossing) films create unreal worlds all their own. In this personal talk, he reveals his childhood fascination with the fantastic -- from reading science fiction to deep-sea diving -- and how it ultimately drove the success of his blockbuster hits "Aliens," "The Terminator," "Titanic" and "Avatar."

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James Cameron: Before Avatar ... a curious boy

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James Cameron's big-budget (and even bigger-grossing) films create unreal worlds all their own. In this personal talk, he reveals his childhood fascination with the fantastic -- from reading science fiction to deep-sea diving -- and how it ultimately drove the success of his blockbuster hits "Aliens," "The Terminator," "Titanic" and "Avatar."

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A founding member of the Axis of Evil Comedy Tour, standup comic Maz Jobrani riffs on the challenges and conflicts of being Iranian-American -- "like, part of me thinks I should have a nuclear program; the other part thinks I can't be trusted ..."

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A founding member of the Axis of Evil Comedy Tour, standup comic Maz Jobrani riffs on the challenges and conflicts of being Iranian-American -- "like, part of me thinks I should have a nuclear program; the other part thinks I can't be trusted ..."

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Maz Jobrani: Did you hear the one about the Iranian-American?

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A founding member of the Axis of Evil Comedy Tour, standup comic Maz Jobrani riffs on the challenges and conflicts of being Iranian-American -- "like, part of me thinks I should have a nuclear program; the other part thinks I can't be trusted ..."

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Singer, songwriter and actress Sara Ramirez is a woman of many talents. Joined by Michael Pemberton on guitar, Ramirez sings of opportunity, wisdom and the highs and lows of life in this live performance of her song, "Rollercoaster."

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Singer, songwriter and actress Sara Ramirez is a woman of many talents. Joined by Michael Pemberton on guitar, Ramirez sings of opportunity, wisdom and the highs and lows of life in this live performance of her song, "Rollercoaster."

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The latest news from the UK and around the world

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The latest news from the UK and around the world

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The Latest News from the UK and Around the World | Sky News

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Sky News delivers breaking news, headlines and top stories from business, politics, entertainment and more in the UK and worldwide.

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Find new ideas and classic advice on strategy, innovation and leadership, for global leaders from the world's best business and management experts.

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2018 FALL TV PREVIEW: ALL THE SCOOP ON YOUR FAVORITE RETURNING SHOWS 

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2018 FALL TV PREVIEW: ALL THE SCOOP ON YOUR FAVORITE RETURNING SHOWS 

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9-1-1 (Fox) from 2018 Fall TV Preview: All the Scoop on Your Favorite Returning Shows

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When to Watch: Two-night premiere kicks off Sunday, Sept. 23 after NFL on Fox. Regular timeslot: Mondays, 9 p.m. on Fox. What to Expect: There will be some new faces along with the new disasters. Jennifer Love Hewitt and Ryan Guzman join the cast for season two.

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Find a Language Exchange Partner on Tandem today! ✓ Connect with other language learners ✓ Learn from Natives today ✓ Become fluent with Tandem!

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Find a Language Exchange Partner on Tandem today! ✓ Connect with other language learners ✓ Learn from Natives today ✓ Become fluent with Tandem!

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What motivates us to work? Contrary to conventional wisdom, it isn't just money. But it's not exactly joy either. It seems that most of us thrive by making constant progress and feeling a sense of purpose

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What motivates us to work? Contrary to conventional wisdom, it isn’t just money. But it’s not exactly joy either. It seems that most of us thrive by making constant progress and feeling a sense of purpose. Behavioral economist Dan Ariely presents two eye-opening experiments that reveal our unexpected and nuanced attitudes toward meaning in our work.

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So, Anyway... by John Cleese, review: 'odd and troubled'The dark comedy of John Cleese’s early life is outweighed by heart-rending sadness

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So, Anyway... by John Cleese, review: 'odd and troubled'The dark comedy of John Cleese’s early life is outweighed by heart-rending sadness

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'I know that this book is supposed to be an autobiography," writes John Cleese in his odd account of the first 30 years of his life, "but the fact is that most of you don't give a tinker's cuss for me as a human being or feel for the many different forms of suffering that make me so special. No, you are just flipping through my heart-rending life story in the hope of getting a couple of laughs, aren't you?"

Parts of So, Anyway... are pretty heart-rending, but anybody hoping for more than a couple of laughs (or anything at all about Monty Python's Flying Circus, or Cleese's second, third and fourth marriages) will be disappointed. I think Cleese is doing his readers a disservice. We don't expect the lives of comedians to be funny and we tend to imagine that their back stories will be quite troubled. We read their memoirs to find out how and why they became funny. If they've turned tears into clowning, we want to know if they feel any better for it.

In Cleese's case, I suspect not. He has been in therapy for decades and you can feel the effort it takes for him to freeze-frame and make sense of the anger and fear of his early childhood. From the way he licks his wounds, you get the impression that understanding what caused them doesn't make them any less painful.

His mother says he never cried as a baby: "I probably thought that if I did, she might appear." The daughter of a crooked, bullying auctioneer, Muriel Cleese lived her life in a state of high anxiety, with a set of phobias it takes her son half a page to list; he concludes that "she experienced the cosmos as a vast, limitless booby trap". Cleese cloudily recalls the fisticuffs between this troubled woman and his loving and gentle father, a constant feature in the 12 different homes the family inhabited during the first 13 years of his life.

More cheerful childhood memories involve cricket in the garden, holidays at Devon Towers (from which he adapted the name of the hotel in Fawlty Towers) and trips to the ice rink, where the Cleese family would shriek with laughter at novice skaters falling over.

As a peace-loving (or, as he has it, "wussy", "wet" or "pathetic") man, he says he was shocked that people found his humour "cruel", and yet his early life is rooted in a dark sort of comedy.

The funniest moment is the scene in which Cleese describes a soft-hearted friend stopping his car to end the misery of a rabbit in the final stages of myxomatosis. Repeated punches failed to kill the poor thing and distressed them both. As the man turned to get a penknife from his car, he realised that people from the traffic jam behind him were forming a mob, appalled by his assault on the bunny. It's just the kind of scrape Basil Fawlty would get into and left me wiping away tears.

The book follows Cleese through school as a pupil and, for a two-year stint, as a teacher (dubiously recommending sarcasm as the best method for controlling 10-year-old boys). Then it's on to Cambridge and the early days of his comedy career (writing for David Frost and appearing in I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again). It ends in 1969, just as Monty Python's Flying Circus is about to get going. Cleese will go on to become a comedy legend but now realises his happiest days were those he spent teaching.

If readers feels short-changed by this book then it's because I think Cleese feels short-changed by life. You imagine he is waiting for somebody to come along like the shopkeeper in the Secret Policeman's Ball-version of the Dead Parrot Sketch and say, " 'Ere's your money back and a couple of holiday vouchers."

So, Anyway... by John Cleese

Random House, 416pp, Telegraph offer price: £16.50 + £1.95 p&p (RRP £20). Call 0844 871 1515 or see books.telegraph.co.uk

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So, Anyway... by John Cleese, review: 'odd and troubled'

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'I know that this book is supposed to be an autobiography," writes John Cleese in his odd account of the first 30 years of his life, "but the fact is that most of you don't give a tinker's cuss for me as a human being or feel for the many different forms of suffering that make me so special.

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The Good Place, season 3 episode 1 review: back on Earth and still wickedly funny

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Mike Schur is a fan of Aristotle. This may not be entirely surprising to fans of his hit show The Good Place, the third season of which has just begun on Netflix. It is, unusually for hit sitcoms, essentially about moral philosophy. But of all the systems of ethics that the show discusses - utilitarianism, deontology and so on - it is Aristotelian virtue ethics which he comes closest to espousing.

Or at the moment he does, anyway. "I change a lot," he says, cheerfully - Schur seems always to be cheerful; it's the appropriate setting for a man whose work, not just The Good Place but also his other comedies Parks and Recreation and Brooklyn Nine-Nine, is so good-natured and optimistic. "I've shifted...

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Aristotle and forking: Mike Schur on the philosophy behind The Good Place

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Mike Schur is a fan of Aristotle. This may not be entirely surprising to fans of his hit show The Good Place, the third season of which has just begun on Netflix. It is, unusually for hit sitcoms, essentially about moral philosophy.

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Get the latest news, sport, celebrity gossip, TV, politics and lifestyle from The Mirror. Big stories with a big heart, always with you in mind.

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It's the eagerly awaited inside story of royal rivalries at the heart of the House of Windsor, and Anna Pasternak, the first to review it, discovers that the author with unique access to Harry and Meghan is unafraid of burning bridges to reveal his truth about the state of the monarchy

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From the US election and Biden's presidency, to gun control and abortion rights; stay up-to-date with the latest lines and comment with The Telegraph.

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I managed to finish Auster's book over Summer. I must say I've got mixed feelings about it. I might need to re-read it.

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'Crazy Rich Asians': Love, Loyalty And Lots Of Money

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Crazy Rich Asians is a love story on multiple levels. On its surface, it's about the love between Rachel Chu (Constance Wu) and Nick Young (Henry Golding), two very attractive thirty-something NYU professors. But it's also a story about love of family: Nick's mother's love for him, and for the family she married into and for which she is prepared to sacrifice everything (perhaps even her personal happiness.) And it's about a love of Asian culture, which, like all cultures, can be an embrace or a prison, depending.

Director Jon M. Chu, whose parents immigrated from Taiwan and China, says everyone involved in the film knew the stakes were high-it was the first romantic comedy in years featuring two Asian principals and an almost completely Asian cast. They knew the burden of representation would be staggering.

But they decided to go big or go home: "Everyone had to agree that this wasn't just a romantic comedy we were doing," Chu told me, while he oversaw cuts in his editing room. The cast and crew also decided "that it was very important that the culture was a part of the story itself, part of the characters themselves."

So the exploration of tension between Nick and his mother Eleanor (played by the sublime Michelle Yeoh) is based in a culture clash. Nick is the scion of one of the biggest, wealthiest real estate developers in Singapore, and he will, eventually, return as expected, to run the family's huge conglomerate and take his place as the head of Singapore society.

But for now, he's a regular guy who travels by public transportation, cleans his own modest apartment and has a frequent-user card to Jamba Juice. He's in love with Rachel, who has been raised by a single mom and who comes from a truly modest background. When they travel to Singapore so Nick can be in his best friend's wedding, she discovers he's rich - or, in the words of writer Kevin Kwan, on whose book the movie is based - crazy rich.

"It's amazing to see what the economic boom of the past thirty years has done to Asia," Kwan says, "and how profoundly it's affected the rest of the population." That wealth inspired him to write Crazy Rich Asians. "I felt that no one was telling the story of contemporary Asia, the Asia I know, the Asia I see when I travel there."
Shared ethnicity doesn't mean shared culture
Eleanor Young is mistress of Tyersall Park, a colonial-era mansion set on wide green lawns and protected by high gates. Eleanor's coolness when meeting Rachel is not so much about the latter's lack of money, but because she knows that marrying into her family comes with a lifetime of responsibility and obligation. And as an American-Born Chinese, Rachel has been brought up with differently. That doesn't make Eleanor a monster, Yeoh insists; it makes her protective of the family.

"(Rachel's) from a society where you are taught to be independent, to take care of yourself first, and everything else comes after that," Yeoh explains. "I think that she was really trying to make Rachel understand that unless she was willing to be really self-sacrificing, that it would be very difficult on her. Even though she was Asian, she was not brought up in Asia."

And that's one of the central tensions in the movie: sharing the same ethnicity doesn't mean you share the same culture. Some of Nick's friends, born in Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong and other places, consider Rachel more American than Chinese. They think her open friendliness, J Crew wardrobe and transparency about her working class background definitely eliminates her as The One for Singapore's golden heir apparent. And the fact that Nick chose Rachel, rather than one of them, makes her a target for barely-disguised shade and bullying.

Romantic lead Henry Golding can sympathize with being told he's less-than. When he was announced as Nick after a months-long search of hundreds of good-looking Asian and Asian-American men, there was some immediate backlash on Twitter.

Golding is undeniably handsome, with an easy charm. He's also biracial. His mom is from an indigenous Malaysian tribe and his father is English, and parts of the Twitter-verse were feeling some kind of way about a guy getting this plum role. Golding, who is known in Singapore as the host of a travel show, says people with biracial identities are having their own moment, so the movie's timing is interesting.

He's also quick to point out, "I was born in Asia. I grew up in Asia. I've lived in so many Asian cultures." And, he says, "I'm definitely more Asian than a lot of people who have never been to Asia but by blood and by race say 'I deserve to be Asian.' I've worked really hard to be Asian, and I think I'm Asian enough."

The pressure of making a place for one's self, whether it's in two different countries, as with Nick, or in two different cultures, as with his own, says Golding, is ever-present.
A novel way to find enough Asian actors
To make an all-Asian movie requires a lot of Asian actors. Jon Chu says he told Warner Bros. from the beginning he'd need to cast a wide net, and they anted up. After putting out a callout on YouTube, he got a ton of video auditions. Then he hired casting directors in several countries to see some of the actors who auditioned. Some of those people ended up in the movie (although they were for small parts; except for Golding, who'd not acted before, most of the roles went to professional actors.)

"And," Chu says with satisfaction, "now we have a database of hundreds and hundreds of English-speaking Asian actors available to Hollywood." So there should be no reason to cast anyone who isn't truly Asian as Asian on-screen.

The expectations for this movie are overwhelming, and not everyone is happy at the buzz around it. E. J. David is Filipino, and teaches cross-cultural psychology at the University of Alaska, Anchorage. When he posted a tweet in April that pointed out the movie was populated with one kind of Asian-South East Asians--it went viral.

There were a lot of negative responses, many people felt he shouldn't be critical of this rare moment of representation. David says he gets that: most people were so starved for representation they didn't want to ding the film. But David, who writes about Filipino identity, says it's important to note some uncomfortable realities: the wealth on display in Crazy Rich Asians, he tweeted, "is based on the exploitation of brown Asian labor. In Singapore, where the movie happens, 56% of domestic workers are Filippino and 32% are Indonesians. The movie erases them."

David doesn't buy the popular positioning of Crazy Rich Asians as the first all-Asian cast since The Joy Luck Club. "I'm not a movie buff by any means, and I'm not an Asian-American movie watchdog at all, but I don't think that's true." For instance, he says, what about The Namesake, starring Kal Penn and directed by Mira Nair? It looks at many of the same issues raised in Crazy Rich Asians -obligation to family, respect for culture-but with South Asian characters.

"So what is it," David asks. "Brown Asians don't count? That's pretty offensive."

Jon Chu says this single movie cannot be everything to everybody. He hopes if Crazy Rich Asians succeeds, other movies featuring more types of Asians will follow. But for now, he's made this movie for this reason: "I'm making it for my own, 12 year-old self, and my (infant) daughter, and the generation that's coming."

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'Crazy Rich Asians': Love, Loyalty And Lots Of Money

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subscribe to Code Switch podcast Crazy Rich Asians is a love story on multiple levels. On its surface, it's about the love between Rachel Chu (Constance Wu) and Nick Young (Henry Golding), two very attractive thirty-something NYU professors.

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At his Stanford University commencement speech, Steve Jobs, CEO and co-founder of Apple and Pixar, urges us to pursue our dreams and see the opportunities in life's setbacks -- including death itself.

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Steve Jobs: How to live before you die | TED Talk

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At his Stanford University commencement speech, Steve Jobs, CEO and co-founder of Apple and Pixar, urges us to pursue our dreams and see the opportunities in life’s setbacks -- including death itself.

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Visit BBC News for up-to-the-minute news, breaking news, video, audio and feature stories. BBC News provides trusted World and UK news as well as local and regional perspectives. Also entertainment, business, science, technology and health news.

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Creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson challenges the way we're educating our children. He champions a radical rethink of our school systems, to cultivate creativity and acknowledge multiple types of intelligence.

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Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?

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Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity.

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The news of society's growing inequality makes all of us uneasy. But why? Dan Ariely reveals some new, surprising research on what we think is fair, as far as how wealth is distributed over societies ... then shows how it stacks up to the real stats.

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Dan Ariely: How equal do we want the world to be? You'd be surprised

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The news of society's growing inequality makes all of us uneasy. But why? Dan Ariely reveals some new, surprising research on what we think is fair, as far as how wealth is distributed over societies ... then shows how it stacks up to the real stats.

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Sharing powerful stories from his anti-obesity project in Huntington, West Virginia -- and a shocking image of the sugar we eat -- TED Prize winner Jamie Oliver makes the case for an all-out assault on our ignorance of food.

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Jamie Oliver: Teach every child about food

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Sharing powerful stories from his anti-obesity project in Huntington, West Virginia -- and a shocking image of the sugar we eat -- TED Prize winner Jamie Oliver makes the case for an all-out assault on our ignorance of food.

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I really recommend this book. Inspiring!!

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Human beings (members of the genus Homo) have existed for about 2.4m years. Homo sapiens, our own wildly egregious species of great apes, has only existed for 6% of that time - about 150,000 years. So a book whose main title is Sapiens shouldn't be subtitled "A Brief History of Humankind". It's easy to see why Yuval Noah Harari devotes 95% of his book to us as a species: self-ignorant as we are, we still know far more about ourselves than about other species of human beings, including several that have become extinct since we first walked the Earth. The fact remains that the history of sapiens - Harari's name for us - is only a very small part of the history of humankind.

Can its full sweep be conveyed in one fell swoop - 400 pages? Not really; it's easier to write a brief history of time - all 14bn years - and Harari also spends many pages on our present and possible future rather than our past. But the deep lines of the story of sapiens are fairly uncontentious, and he sets them out with verve.

For the first half of our existence we potter along unremarkably; then we undergo a series of revolutions. First, the "cognitive" revolution: about 70,000 years ago, we start to behave in far more ingenious ways than before, for reasons that are still obscure, and we spread rapidly across the planet. About 11,000 years ago we enter on the agricultural revolution, converting in increasing numbers from foraging (hunting and gathering) to farming. The "scientific revolution" begins about 500 years ago. It triggers the industrial revolution, about 250 years ago, which triggers in turn the information revolution, about 50 years ago, which triggers the biotechnological revolution, which is still wet behind the ears. Harari suspects that the biotechnological revolution signals the end of sapiens: we will be replaced by bioengineered post-humans, "amortal" cyborgs, capable of living forever.

This is one way to lay things out. Harari embeds many other momentous events, most notably the development of language: we become able to think sharply about abstract matters, cooperate in ever larger numbers, and, perhaps most crucially, gossip. There is the rise of religion and the slow overpowering of polytheisms by more or less toxic monotheisms. Then there is the evolution of money and, more importantly, credit. There is, connectedly, the spread of empires and trade as well as the rise of capitalism.

Harari swashbuckles through these vast and intricate matters in a way that is - at its best - engaging and informative. It's a neat thought that "we did not domesticate wheat. It domesticated us." There was, Harari says, "a Faustian bargain between humans and grains" in which our species "cast off its intimate symbiosis with nature and sprinted towards greed and alienation". It was a bad bargain: "the agricultural revolution was history's biggest fraud". More often than not it brought a worse diet, longer hours of work, greater risk of starvation, crowded living conditions, greatly increased susceptibility to disease, new forms of insecurity and uglier forms of hierarchy. Harari thinks we may have been better off in the stone age, and he has powerful things to say about the wickedness of factory farming, concluding with one of his many superlatives: "modern industrial agriculture might well be the greatest crime in history".

He accepts the common view that the fundamental structure of our emotions and desires hasn't been touched by any of these revolutions: "our eating habits, our conflicts and our sexuality are all a result of the way our hunter-gatherer minds interact with our current post-industrial environment, with its mega-cities, airplanes, telephones and computers ... Today we may be living in high-rise apartments with over-stuffed refrigerators, but our DNA still thinks we are in the savannah." He gives a familiar illustration - our powerful desires for sugar and fat have led to the widespread availability of foods that are primary causes of unhealthiness and ugliness. The consumption of pornography is another good example. It's just like overeating: if the minds of pornography addicts could be seen as bodies, they would look just like the grossly obese.

At one point Harari claims that "the leading project of the scientific revolution" is the Gilgamesh Project (named after the hero of the epic who set out to destroy death): "to give humankind eternal life" or "amortality". He is sanguine about its eventual success. But amortality isn't immortality, because it will always be possible for us to die by violence, and Harari is plausibly sceptical about how much good it will do us. As amortals, we may become hysterically and disablingly cautious (Larry Niven develops the point nicely in his description of the "Puppeteers" in the Ringworld science fiction novels). The deaths of those we love may become far more terrible. We may grow weary of all things under the sun - even in heaven (see the last chapter of Julian Barnes's A History of the World in 10½ Chapters). We may come to agree with JRR Tolkien's elves, who saw mortality as a gift to human beings that they themselves lacked. We may come to feel what Philip Larkin felt: "Beneath it all, desire of oblivion runs."

Even if we put all these points aside, there's no guarantee that amortality will bring greater happiness. Harari draws on well-known research that shows that a person's happiness from day to day has remarkably little to do with their material circumstances. Certainly money can make a difference - but only when it lifts us out of poverty. After that, more money changes little or nothing. Certainly a lottery winner is lifted by her luck, but after about 18 months her average everyday happiness reverts to its old level. If we had an infallible "happyometer", and toured Orange County and the streets of Kolkata, it's not clear that we would get consistently higher readings in the first place than in the second.

This point about happiness is a persistent theme in Sapiens. When Arthur Brooks (head of the conservative American Enterprise Institute) made a related point in the New York Times in July, he was criticised for trying to favour the rich and justify income inequality. The criticism was confused, for although current inequalities of income are repellent, and harmful to all, the happiness research is well confirmed. This doesn't, however, prevent Harari from suggesting that the lives lived by sapiens today may be worse overall than the lives they lived 15,000 years ago.

Much of Sapiens is extremely interesting, and it is often well expressed. As one reads on, however, the attractive features of the book are overwhelmed by carelessness, exaggeration and sensationalism. Never mind his standard and repeated misuse of the saying "the exception proves the rule" (it means that exceptional or rare cases test and confirm the rule, because the rule turns out to apply even in those cases). There's a kind of vandalism in Harari's sweeping judgments, his recklessness about causal connections, his hyper-Procrustean stretchings and loppings of the data. Take his account of the battle of Navarino. Starting from the fact that British investors stood to lose money if the Greeks lost their war of independence, Harari moves fast: "the bond holders' interest was the national interest, so the British organised an international fleet that, in 1827, sank the main Ottoman flotilla in the battle of Navarino. After centuries of subjugation, Greece was finally free." This is wildly distorted - and Greece was not then free. To see how bad it is, it's enough to look at the wikipedia entry on Navarino.

Harari hates "modern liberal culture", but his attack is a caricature and it boomerangs back at him. Liberal humanism, he says, "is a religion". It "does not deny the existence of God"; "all humanists worship humanity"; "a huge gulf is opening between the tenets of liberal humanism and the latest findings of the life sciences". This is silly. It's also sad to see the great Adam Smith drafted in once again as the apostle of greed. Still, Harari is probably right that "only a criminal buys a house ... by handing over a suitcase of banknotes" - a point that acquires piquancy when one considers that about 35% of all purchases at the high end of the London housing market are currently being paid in cash.

* To order Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind for £18.99 with free UK p&p call Guardian book service on 0330 333 6846 or go to guardianbookshop.co.uk.
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Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari - review

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Human beings (members of the genus Homo) have existed for about 2.4m years. Homo sapiens, our own wildly egregious species of great apes, has only existed for 6% of that time - about 150,000 years. So a book whose main title is Sapiens shouldn't be subtitled "A Brief History of Humankind".

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The 50 best TV shows of 2017: No 5 Big Little Lies

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The cleverly plotted tale of murder and yummy mummies brought a masterly twist on soapy US drama and a career-best performance from Nicole Kidman

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English Listening Lesson Library Online

ELLLO has over 3,000 free listening lessons for all levels! Most activities have audio or video, a transcript, vocabulary lesson and interactive quiz.

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ELLLO - English Listening Lesson Library Online

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ELLLO stands for English Listening Lesson Library Online and features natural English lessons that come with quizzes, vocabulary training, and free printable worksheets. ESL students and teachers can access over 2,000 free lessons that feature World English with speakers from over 100 countries.

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You don't need to live in an English-speaking country to become fluent in English. If you are smart about the way you learn English, you don't even need to leave your home town. Use these 10 top tips for to improve your English without even leaving your city.

Surround yourself with English

You don't need to be in an English-speaking country to surround yourself with English. Find ways to make English part of your everyday life at home, like writing your shopping list, reading the newspaper, listening to the radio, writing a diary in English, or listening to English on your cellphone while traveling to work.

Make English friends

Even if you don't live in an English-speaking country, there are probably many foreigners living nearby. Find ways to meet native English-speakers: going to foreign bars and restaurants, joining sport and social clubs, or arranging language exchanges. You could even volunteer as a guide at a local tourist attraction to meet English-speakers from all over the world.

Find study partners

You don't need native speakers to practice your English. Find a study partner, or form an English club and meet regularly to speak English. You can motivate each other, and you will learn by helping others with their problems.

Use authentic materials

Just reading English in textbooks can get boring. Try reading English texts written for and by native speakers. It will be a challenge at first but a lot more interesting once you can do it. If you can't find English books or magazines, use the Internet to read the news in English every day. Why not take a look at the EF English Live free Engish resources and check your skills with our free English test, try fun quizzes, learn with our ebooks and more?

Get online

Get online and you can be in contact with people from all over the world. Join chat rooms or forums, take an online English course, or find a penpal to practice your English while learning about different cultures. With social media, it's easier than ever to stay in touch with friends from all over the world.

Set yourself realistic goals

Give yourself a reason for studying: do you want to get a promotion, be able to talk to your foreign colleagues, study abroad, or spend your next holiday in an English-speaking country? Set short-term as well as long-term goals, and keep track of your progress.

Listen to real English

Train your ear by listening to English spoken at normal speed, even if you don't understand everything. Also practice listening without seeing things written down and don't be afraid to listen to things several times to catch any interesting or unusual vocabulary in there. It's easy to find free English podcasts online and news agencies from most English-speaking countries have audio and video news available for free online.

Find fun ways to learn new words

If you like singing, then look up the words for your favorite English songs. Or if you remember what you see, write new words on 'Post-it' notes and stick them up around your house. Make funny example sentences or draw little pictures next to new vocabulary to help you remember it.

Learn about the culture

Find out about the people and the culture of English-speaking countries. Learning a language is not just about grammar and vocabulary: it's about communicating with people who have different ways of thinking as well as speaking!

Whatever you do, have fun!

Learning a language does take work, but you'll be more likely to stick to it if you are enjoying yourself. Play games, do crossword puzzles, sing songs, read comics, and don't worry too much about making mistakes - making mistakes is often the way to learn best!

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10 Top tips for learning English at home - EF English Live

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You don't need to live in an English-speaking country to become fluent in English. If you are smart about the way you learn English, you don't even need to leave your home town. Use these 10 top tips for to improve your English without even leaving your city.

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he last thing you'd expect Paul Auster to write is a social-realist novel of panoramic, Dickensian scope. He's known for his concision, his affiliations with European modernism, his conjuring tricks and sleight of hand. But there's a telling tribute to David Copperfield halfway through this book, along with a rebuke to Salinger's Holden Caulfield for badmouthing Dickens in the first sentence of The Catcher in the Rye. More to the point, the opening of the novel - Auster's first in seven years - is engagingly old-fashioned in spirit, as the genealogy and childhood of one Archibald Isaac Ferguson are set out.

Surely it can't be that simple? And no, it isn't. Ferguson, it emerges, isn't the hero of his own life but of his own lives, plural. With 800 pages still to go, any illusion of a single narrative begins to crack. What's this reference to Aunt Mildred never having married when we've just been told the name of her husband? How could Uncle Lew have both made a fortune from and been bankrupted by a bet on the 1954 baseball World Series? Which to believe: that the warehouse on which the family business depends was burgled or that it burned down?

Even those who are taken in at the start will quickly clock the narrative logic. From his one beginning, as the only child of Stanley and Rose Ferguson, born (as Auster was) in 1947, the hero quadruples. His four selves go their separate ways, each with his own experience of childhood, adolescence, friendship, love, sport and school. His parents likewise have fourfold lives, while retaining their names and professions (he's a businessman, she a photographer). So too, key figures in Ferguson's life, notably his cousin/girlfriend Amy, assume different roles and characteristics.

For all the novel's structural complexity, the premise is simple. The film Sliding Doors might be one analogy. Robert Frost's poem "The Road Not Taken" is nearer the mark: 'Two roads diverged in a wood, and I- / I took the one less travelled by, / And that has made all the difference.' Images of crossroads and forking paths recur. The rationale is made explicit in the closing pages, as the fourth Ferguson - F4, as it were, who by this point is in his 20s - reflects that "the torment of being alive in a single body was that at any given moment you had to be on one road only, even though you could have been on another, travelling toward an altogether different place". Only imagination (or cloning) can circumvent these limits. Hence this novel about "four identical but different people with the same name Ferguson".

Though there are echoes of Auster's life throughout the text, the sheer weight of historical detail acts as a defence against solipsism. The cold war, the execution of the Rosenbergs, JFK, Martin Luther King, the Vietnam draft, the My Lai massacre, the Kent State shootings: here's a novel as attentive to period detail as Philip Roth would be, or Richard Ford, or Jonathan Franzen. The new expansiveness is reflected in the sentences, which run on, fluent, self-delighting, reluctant to stop. And the relationship between the private and public is neatly evoked through the image of concentric circles, with the world (and war) on the outer rim and the individual (and his battles) a small dot at the centre.

Though there are echoes of Auster's life throughout the text, the sheer weight of historical detail acts as a defence against solipsism

Auden and Isherwood once wrote a play called The Ascent of F6. Auster's novel might have been called The Descent to F4, though the title he settled on, with its descending numbers, is equally apt. It's not a case of And Then There Were None, but given the turbulence of the period, and various catastrophes described (conflagrations, car crashes, brawls), a heavy death toll is unsurprising. Auster's perception of life's frailty has roots in his own experience. As a teenager at summer camp, he saw the boy next to him killed by lightning during an electric storm. He offers a variant here, when a boy with a similar name to Ferguson's - Artie Federman - dies of a brain aneurysm. The multiple selves are involved in multiple dramas. There was a time when Auster seemed to regard narrative momentum as an offence to the duties of meta-fiction. That's not the case here. The reader is urged to go with the flow.

Once you stop and come away from the novel it's hard to remember which Ferguson it was - 1, 2, 3 or 4? - who broke his arm falling out of a tree, lost two fingers in a car accident, launched his own newspaper while still at school, first had sex on the same day that JFK was assassinated, visited a prostitute called Julia, was seduced by a gay student called Andy, got stuck in a lift during a power cut, or walked in on his grandfather making a porn film. Does it matter? Not much. While reading, you're immersed. But it's hard to suppress a sense of missed opportunity. If Auster was going to invent four different lives, why make them so similar? Why the recurrent obsession with sport (baseball and basketball), movies and Paris? And the same pursuit of a writing career? Why not send his hero somewhere else entirely, whether China or a car production line? It's not that Auster can't think outside his own box (the sympathy with which he draws the minor characters proves he can) but that for him DNA seems to be destiny. Nature triumphs over nurture. Rich or poor, straight or gay, urban or suburban, the Fergusons share more than divides them. The four merge back into one.

Thanks to the numbered sections, their narratives could, at a pinch, be read separately, one after the other. An arrangement of differently coloured Post-it notes (or, more brutally still, a cut-up of the pages) would make it easier still, with four shortish novels replacing one of 900 pages. But what would be lost is the sense of moving through time - and of seeing the Fergusons grow up alongside each other. The interweavings and disjunctions are part of the fun. When one F is having it rough ("The best thing about being 15 is that you don't have to be 15 for more than a year"), another is coming into his own. When one chooses AI Ferguson as his pen-name, another opts for Isaac Ferguson. And so on.

The novel drags towards the end. The recounting of student protests at Columbia is disproportionately long. There's too much propagandising on behalf of writing (as "the difference between being alive and not alive") rather than allowing the writing itself do the work. And a novel that opens so expansively ends in narrow self-referentialism as F4 decides to "invent three other versions of himself and tell their stories along with his own story", a project he embarks on after moving to Paris in 1970 and which he completes five years later, with a novel of 1,133 pages.

An earlier glance into his future suggests the novel will prove unpublishable. Auster's version, 42 years on, has the advantage of a lifetime's practice and the conviction that this, more than any other, is the book he always wanted to write. A work that begins with the story of an east European immigrant (Ferguson's grandfather) arriving at Ellis Island on the first day of the 20th century has the right credentials for a great American novel. But the story is jokey and unreliable, and Auster is too wedded to his own experience to pretend that it's everyman's. It's enough to have produced a novel that celebrates the liberal values of his generation - from love of art to concern for justice - at a time when they're under siege. Ferguson may be stuck in a bubble. But better a bubble than a wall.

Blake Morrison's Shingle Street is published by Chatto. 4321 is published by Faber & Faber. To order a copy for £15 (RRP £20) go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.

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4321 by Paul Auster review - a man of many parts

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he last thing you'd expect Paul Auster to write is a social-realist novel of panoramic, Dickensian scope. He's known for his concision, his affiliations with European modernism, his conjuring tricks and sleight of hand.

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