Now is the hour - 103 and trending: Dame Vera Lynn eight decades after her debut

NOW IS THE HOUR - 103 AND TRENDING What makes 'We'll Meet Again' tug at our emotions?

What makes 'We'll Meet Again' tug at our emotions?

Last Sunday evening I was making lentil soup (words I never thought I’d type) when Radio 4’s discussion of wealth, or lack thereof, gave way to a profile of Dame Vera Lynn. She was “trending”, her NHS fundraising duet with Katherine Jenkins of “We’ll Meet Again” having hit number one on iTunes. A mash-up of the song, in aid of West End artists, is to follow.

Bill Brandt/Henry Moore, The Hepworth Wakefield review - a matter of perception

★★★★★ REOPENING THIS WEEKEND - BILL BRANDT/HENRY MOORE, THE HEPWORTH WAKEFIELD Cerebral show teases out affinities between photography and sculpture

Cerebral show teases out fascinating affinities between photography and sculpture

Bill Brandt’s photographs and Henry Moore’s studies of people sheltering underground during the Blitz (September 1940 to May 1941) offer glimpses of a world that is, thankfully, lost to us. A year and a half after the end of the bombing campaign, the work of the two artists was published side-by-side in the December 1942 edition of the pioneering illustrated magazine, Lilliput.

'You’re Jewish. With a name like Neumann, you have to be'

Introducing 'When Time Stopped', a powerful new investigative memoir about the Holocaust in Czechoslovakia

It was during my first week at Tufts University in America, when I was 17, that I was told by a stranger that I was Jewish. As I left one of the orientation talks, I was approached by a slight young man with short brown hair and intense eyes. He spoke to me in Spanish and introduced himself as Elliot from Mexico.

“I was told we should meet,” he said, beaming. “Because we’re both good-looking, Latin American, and Jewish.”

Leopoldstadt, Wyndham's Theatre review - Stoppard at once personal and accessible

★★★★ LEOPOLDSTADT, WYNDHAM'S THEATRE Stoppard at once personal and accessible

Director Patrick Marber knits Tom Stoppard's putative swan song into a compelling whole

It’s not uncommon for playwrights to begin their careers by writing what they know, to co-opt a frequently quoted precept about authorial inspiration. So it’s among the many fascinations of Leopoldstadt that Tom Stoppard, at the age of 82, should have written his most personal play and also, very possibly (and sadly), his last.

Francesca Wade: Square Haunting - Bloomsbury retold

The stories of five women in Bloomsbury recover lost layers in London's palimpsest

These days, Bloomsbury rests in a state of elegant somnolence. The ghosts of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell linger on in the shabby gentility of Russell Square and its environs, the bookish institutions that are the bones of the place conferring tranquility, despite the many students and tourists.

Blomfield, Philharmonia, Salonen, RFH review - sounds of a troubled truce

★★★★ BLOMFIELD, PHILHARMONIA, SALONEN, RFH Three idiosyncratic works tell one story of the world in 1945

Three idiosyncratic works tell one story of the world in 1945

Concert programmes that set out to tell us a story can prove a mixed blessing. Yes, it’s valuable and stimulating to find ideas, and narratives, embodied in the musical flow. But great pieces, well-performed, have a habit of cutting loose from the frame of concepts someone has devised for them.

A Hidden Life review - Nazism stoically refused

★★★★★ A HIDDEN LIFE Terrence Malick's raptures find solid ground in a forgotten stand against fascism

Terrence Malick's raptures find solid ground in a forgotten stand against fascism

Terrence Malick returns to his former greatness following three features of unscripted, all-star poesy, with this sombre biopic of sainted Austrian conscientious objector Franz Jägerstätter (August Diehl).