feuds

During the English civil war, in hiding and in boredom, the Archbishop of Armagh, James Ussher, set about pinning down the date of creation. A decade down the line, he publicised his research findings with breathtaking self-assurance: the world was a sprightly 6,000 years old. More specifically, God had created it on a Saturday night in October 4004BC. As it was, his hunch was a few zeros off the mark. The Earth was, in fact, formed 4.6bn years ago.Growing up in Ulster’s Bible belt, the historian Michael Taylor writes,…

I have done battle with the Libertines three times over the past 19 years. Only I haven’t, not really. Two of the interviews were with Pete Doherty for projects away from the band that made him famous: Babyshambles and the Puta Madres. The first was in a mangy London hotel bedroom in 2005 – he was sitting on a motorbike, revving it up, when he was awake. Much of the time he was asleep. He was 26, surrounded by drugs paraphernalia, and had daubed “ROUGH TRADE” on the wall in his own blood. Last time we met, four years ago,…

Last week, Casandra “Cassie” Ventura filed a federal lawsuit against Sean “Diddy” Combs in New York federal court. Her lawsuit includes graphic claims of sexual assault, physical abuse, and an allegation that Combs, her ex-boyfriend, would force her to have sex with male sex workers while he watched. Ventura’s claims are among the worst, but not the first controversy that the music mogul and entrepreneur has been alleged to be involved in.  Combs has attempted to rebrand himself as “Brother Love” in recent years,…

Whisper it: Loudon Wainwright III is happy. The great curmudgeon of popular music has spent 50-plus years picking at old scabs, showcasing his selfishness and documenting his tortured relationship with his famous family. But he has finally made a hopeful album. Sure, we still hear from the Wainwright of old; the tragicomic misanthrope who quotes Sartre’s “Hell is other people” in the song Family Vacation, about his need to take a holiday from his family. But Lifetime Achievement shimmers with grace, acceptance and, dare…

There’s nothing quite so dramatic and inspirational as a scientific breakthrough. But what happens when different groups of scientists can’t seem to agree on the science? DeepMind, an Alphabet research company based in London, published a fascinating research paper last year wherein it claimed to have solved the huge challenge of “simulating matter on the quantum scale with AI.” Now, nearly eight months later, a group of academic researchers from Russia and South Korea may have uncovered a…

“Cruel!”, “Completely disgusting!”, “Candy ass!” – these are just some of the barbs that Hollywood stars have unleashed upon each other over the years. But which actors said them? And about whom?Julia Roberts and Nick Nolte might have been romantically entangled in I Love Trouble, but they also had a few tangles – and not the good kind – with each other off-set. And even though Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams went on to date in real life after The Notebook, it wasn’t exactly love at first sight for those two, either.A lot…