Released in May, sixty years ago...

Now in residence at the Madrid Prado, novelist Leila Slimani talks about its dark, inspirational Goyas, the clandestine nature of her writing, and why she finally wrote about her jailed then posthumously exonerated father... www.theguardian.com/books/2026/m...

"Around 6 or 7 years old, I found a completely new way of seeing things. The cinema screen has been crucial in understanding how the world was much more diverse and complex than it appeared to me living in the countryside in Sicily." — Giuseppe Tornatore #botd 🎞️ Cinema Paradiso

The French singer-songwriter and actor Alain Souchon #botd has released 15 albums and has played roles in seven films. In 1993, Souchon released what would become one of his most iconic songs, 'Foule sentimentale', featured on the million-selling album C'est déjà ça.

John Barth #botd — American postmodernist novelist, author of The Sot-Weed Factor and Giles Goat-Boy, and one of a wave of writers in the 1960s who challenged standards of language and plot...

"The more I learned about the use of pesticides, the more appalled I became. What I discovered was that everything which meant most to me as a naturalist was being threatened, and that nothing I could do would be more important..." — Rachel Carson #botd

Dashiell Hammett #botd — "He was spare, frugal, hard-boiled, but he did over and over again what only the best writers can ever do. He wrote scenes that seemed never to have been written before..." Raymond Chandler

Legendary jazz musician Sonny Rollins, who was known as the "saxophone colossus", has died aged 95. He had a prolific career that began in the late 1940s, working with Miles Davis, Charlie Parker and John Coltrane, and released more than 60 albums...

"Making a movie, you leave a trail of decisions behind you, and that's how you start to see the shape of what you've done. When you get far enough, you turn around and say, 'Ha, that's the movie'..." Sydney Pollack July 1, 1934 – May 26, 2008

"I love witches and magic, and dress-up and make-believe..." Helena Bonham Carter #botd

"When the space shuttle's engines cut off, you're finally in space, in orbit, weightless. I remember unstrapping from my seat, floating over to the window, and that's when I got my first view of Earth..." Sally Ride #botd

Dorothea Lange #botd — Her photographs influenced the development of documentary photography and humanized the consequences of the Great Depression, making her images timeless...

Miles Davis, #botd one hundred years ago in 1926, is among the most influential and acclaimed figures in the history of jazz. In a career spanning nearly five decades, he was at the forefront of several major stylistic developments...

Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone national park, Wyoming, is the largest hot spring in the USA at more than 300ft wide at its widest point and over 120ft deep. The colours outside the pool’s blue centre are created by ‘thermophiles’ – heat-loving microscopic organisms.

"If your photographs aren't good enough, you're not close enough." Arguably the most acclaimed war photographer of the 20th century. On May 25, 1954, Robert Capa 🙏 was on assignment in Thái Bình Province, Vietnam, when he stepped on a landmine and was killed.

"How compelling is the voice in the story at hand? That's another test of mine. There has to be something at stake, something important working itself out from sentence to sentence..." Raymond Carver #botd

"A writer is an eternal outsider, his nose pressed against whatever window on the other side of which he sees his material..." John Gregory Dunne #botd and Joan Didion

"Everything I do is really an expression of myself, through colours and shapes and, at the same time, I try to explain what I feel not only as a creator but also as a woman. I cannot separate one from the other..." Sonia Rykiel #botd

Legendary rock’n’roll singer and multiple Grammy award-winner Tina Turner was famed for her stage performances. Her powerful vocals made her one of the best-known singers of her generation, with sales of over 100 million records. Tina Turner November 26, 1939 – May 24, 2023

“You go home expecting to go right to bed. But then, on the way, you go past the piano and there's a flirtation. It flirts with you. So, you sit down and try out a couple of chords and when you look up, it's 7 AM...” Duke Ellington April 29, 1899 – May 24, 1974

"I do a film because I like the story. And the parts I've been most successful in are the ones I've desperately wanted..." Kristin Scott Thomas #botd

Roger Deakins #botd — One of the great artists of light and shade. Nominated for Academy Awards sixteen times, winning Best Cinematography twice, and recipient of five BAFTA Awards for Best Cinematography. "Every scene is a challenge..."

Bob Dylan #botd recording 'Highway 61 Revisited' in Columbia's Studio A in the summer of 1965. Rolling Stone magazine described it as “one of those albums that, quite simply, changed everything”, and placed it at number four in its list of the greatest albums of all time.

"He was part of a generation of dramatists, including John Osborne and Harold Pinter, who helped change the face of British theatre. If Wesker’s early plays had personal origins, they also had profound political and social resonance." — Michael Billington Arnold Wesker #botd

By the time Mai Zetterling #botd decided to become a filmmaker, she had already been a stage and screen actress for nearly twenty years, beginning as a teenager in the early 1940s in her native Sweden...

Belle de Jour, the surrealist film directed by Luis Buñuel, from a screenplay based on the novel by Joseph Kessel, starring Catherine Deneuve in the leading role as Séverine, was released this day in 1967 and is one of Buñuel's most successful films.

A humpback whale off the coast of Australia after a 15,000km journey from Brazil, marking what researchers believe is the longest distance ever documented between sightings of an individual humpback...

Two star-crossed lovers have only minutes to change the course of their lives in this electrifying art-house smash hit. Set to a throbbing techno score, RUN LOLA RUN directed by Tom Tykwer #botd is a bracing shot of pure cinematic adrenaline...

Robert Moog #botd envisioned a limited market for synthesisers when he developed the instrument in the mid-60s. He credited Wendy Carlos's 1968 album Switched-on Bach with shattering the concept that they were only suitable for creating sound effects and avant-garde music...

"You paint the way you have to in order to give. That's life itself, and someone will look and say it is the product of knowing, but it has nothing to do with knowing, it has to do with giving..." Franz Kline #botd

Jodie Foster’s closet picks...

Chelsea Flower Show 2026

Creator of the classic children’s books The Tiger Who Came to Tea, and Mog the Forgetful Cat. “She was a brilliantly talented artist and storyteller who has left us an extraordinary body of work...” — Charlie Redmayne Judith Kerr June 14, 1923 – May 22, 2019

Marisol (María Sol Escobar) #botd fused pop art imagery and folk art in assemblages and sculptures that, together with her mysterious persona, made her one of the most compelling artists on the New York scene in the 1960s...

Tirez sur le pianiste dir. François Truffaut, 1960 Charles Aznavour #botd "I never suspected how easy it would be to work with Aznavour. He brings with him such truthfulness that little by little he becomes the entire film..." — François Truffaut

"It was his interpretative originality that made him a great actor. He was one of theatre’s most daring stars, whose best films bear witness to a talent many never had the chance to see on stage..."— Michael Billlington Laurence Olivier #botd

Georges Remi #botd, known by the pen name Hergé, was a Belgian comic strip artist. He is best known for creating The Adventures of Tintin, the series of comic albums that are considered one of the most popular European comics of the 20th century.

"Circumstantial evidence is occasionally very convincing, as when you find a trout in the milk, to quote Thoreau's example..." Arthur Conan Doyle #botd May 22, 1859 His Sherlock Holmes novels and short stories remain milestones in the field of crime fiction.

Coloured Still Life Patrick Caulfield — 1967

The three Ellas rising through McLaren's Formula One ranks... www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

A self-taught artist, Niki de Saint Phalle was quickly recognized in the 1960s as an important participant in contemporary art both in Europe and America, and used art as a rebellion against a patriarchal society... Niki de Saint Phalle October 29, 1930 – May 21, 2002

In 1932, Amelia Earhart took off from Newfoundland and became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, landing in Northern Ireland just under 15 hours later on May 21. "The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity..."

James Dean and his Porsche...

Niki Lauda won the Formula One world championship three times, and at the time of his retirement held the record for the most podium finishes. Niki Lauda February 22, 1949 – May 20, 2019

"More often it is the artist, writer or poet, who succeeds in capturing the spirit of an age; in so doing, they make an important contribution to our understanding. Flavio Costantini is such a person." — Stuart Christie Flavio Costantini September 21, 1926 – May 20, 2013

"Evolution is one of the two or three most fascinating subjects in all of science. And science is an integral part of culture. It's one of the glories of the intellectual tradition..." Stephen Jay Gould September 10, 1941 – May 20, 2002

"One must be entirely sensitive to the structure of the material one is handling. One must yield to it in tiny details of execution, perhaps the handling of the surface or grain, and one must master it as a whole..." Barbara Hepworth January 10, 1903 – May 20, 1975

Happy birthday Cher!

"I was going to be an architect. I graduated with a degree in architecture and I had a scholarship to go back to Princeton and get my Masters. I'd done theatricals in college, because it was fun..." James Stewart #botd

"Supporting my daughter on her epic 30-mile run over the Lakeland fells gave me the chance to capture the early morning tranquility of beautiful Buttermere in Cumbria..." — Neil Braithwaite