Is serious art dying? The year’s biggest cultural crowd-pullers included a film about a mass-produced doll and a moanathon from a junior member of the Royal Family.
Brickbats, barbs and Barbie: 2023 in culture
Mega must-sees: Taylor Swift sold more tickets in a day than Vermeer did in four months. Glossary
Agog - Very eager or curious to hear or see something.
National Theatre - A theatre group based in London.
Infuriated - Making someone extremely angry and impatient.
Kilburn - Kilburn is an area of north west London, England, which spans the boundary of three London Boroughs.
Vermeer - A Dutch Baroque Period painter recognised as one of the greatest painters of the 17th Century.
Rigged - The act of arranging dishonestly for the result of something, for example an election, to be changed.
Explicit - Containing sexual content.
King Lear - As William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was penning his great tragedy, the plague spread across London and reached his own house, killing his landlady, Marie Mountjoy.
Glastonbury - An English town known worldwide today for its yearly music festival.
Grossing - Producing or earning an amount of money as gross profit or income.
Atomic bomb - A bomb that rapidly releases nuclear energy.
Disarmament - The reduction or withdrawal of military forces and weapons.
Henrik Ibsen - A Norwegian playwright and theatre director, and one of the founders of modernism in theatre.
Samuel Beckett - An Irish novelist, short story writer, playwright and poet who was a key literary figure of the 20th Century.