'Nail-chewing' thriller explores 1972 Munich Olympics terrorist attack

You might think that in the wake of Kevin Macdonald's documentary "One Day in September" (1999) and Steven Spielberg's "Munich" (2005), filmmakers might have nothing left of interest to say about the terrorist attack at the 1972 Munich Olympics that left 11 Israeli athletes and coaches dead, said Matthew Bond in the Mail on Sunday. "But you'd be wrong."

"September 5", which has deservedly picked up an Oscar nomination for best original screenplay, revisits that day, but describes it from the standpoint of the ABC journalists and production crew who covered the events as they unfolded. The result is a "brilliantly edited and all too timely thriller" featuring "standout performances" from the likes of John Magaro, as the inexperienced producer in charge of the control room, and Leonie Benesch, as the production assistant who turns out to be the only German speaker present. Peter Sarsgaard also "adds heft" as a TV veteran wrestling with the ethics of covering a terrorist siege live on television. It adds up to a "serious, sombre, intelligent drama".

"Brisk, jittery and predominantly filmed with hand-held cameras", this "gripping" film "deftly cuts between the nervy dramatised events behind the scenes and actual archive footage from ABC's coverage" of the day, said Wendy Ide in The Observer. "So tautly directed that you can practically feel the panic-sweat trickling down the back of your own neck", this is "nail-chewing, edge-of-the-seat stuff".

"The film is clenched and claustrophobic," said Tim Robey in The Telegraph, and with its 95-minute running time, "it certainly doesn't dawdle". But it swerves the bigger questions it raises, and in the end I found it a bit "workmanlike", with the "feel of a hand-wringing teleplay". 

by Eimear McBride      

The Irish novelist Eimear McBride has always been drawn to "dark material", said Lucy Hughes-Hallett in The Guardian. From "A Girl is a Half-formed Thing", her prize-winning 2013 debut, onwards, her novels have featured "incestuous child abuse, self-harm, suicide, heroin addiction" and "lots and lots" of sex. Yet even more startling than her "transgressive" subject matter is her linguistic inventiveness: she "breaks every rule in the grammar book".

In her latest work, she returns to the lovers – drama student Eily and established actor Stephen – who featured in 2016's "The Lesser Bohemians". It's two years on, and "something awful" has happened, though exactly what isn't clear at first, and only emerges from retrospective sections charting their relationship. It's an "inventive framework", and McBride controls it skilfully; but as ever, what's most striking is "the way she handles words". On a hot day, "the boil outside makes sloth of in here"; of one character she writes: "all his vaunt's gone". "This is classic European modernism", but "remade in the service of intimacy". The effect is rarely less than "extraordinary".

This book is less a sequel to "The Lesser Bohemians" than "a patina over" it, said Jo Hamya in The Telegraph. Subjects raised in the earlier novel – such as the abuse Stephen suffered as a child – are revisited, though in a different form: one 78-page scene describes Eily and Stephen sitting in a cinema, watching a film about his childhood. It can "start to feel too fraught" at times, said Damon Galgut in the TLS. And repetitive too. Still, such is the originality of McBride's "fractured" language that there is "much to astonish and amaze".

Businessman, philanthropist and revered spiritual leader

His Highness Prince Karim Aga Khan IV, who has died aged 88, was known in the UK for his enormous wealth, his "penchant for jets, yachts" and beautiful women, and his love of horse racing, said The Telegraph. Having inherited two of the world's largest racing stables, he established a hugely successful bloodstock business and owned or part-owned five Derby winners. The most famous was Shergar, the stallion kidnapped by an armed gang from a stud farm in Ireland, in 1983, and never seen again. But to the world's 12 to 15 million-strong diaspora of Ismaili Muslims – a mystical branch of Shia Islam – the Aga Khan was not a jet-set playboy. On the contrary: they revered him as their spiritual leader, a direct descendant of Mohammed via the Prophet's daughter and her husband Hazrat Ali, the first Imam, and a "benefactor of immense generosity". The philanthropic efforts of the Aga Khan (a title bestowed by the Shah of Persia in the 1830s, before the dynasty relocated to the Indian subcontinent) included building a network of schools and hospitals across Africa and Asia, for Ismailis and others.

Born in Geneva in 1936, Prince Karim was the son of the playboy Aly Khan and Joan Yarde-Buller. His parents divorced in 1949, and both remarried (his mother to the newspaper owner Viscount Camrose, his father to the actress Rita Hayworth). Educated at the exclusive Le Rosey school in Switzerland, Prince Karim spent his holidays trailing between his parents' homes, then went to Harvard. He was a 20-year-old student when, in 1957, his grandfather, the third Aga Khan, died, at which point he learnt that he (and not his father) had been chosen to be the fourth Aga Khan and 49th Imam of the Ismailis. In his will, his grandfather explained that his people needed a young leader, an "Imam for the Atomic Age". Two weeks later, he was granted the style "His Highness" by Queen Elizabeth II, who became a friend, owing to their shared interest in all things equine.

Having spent 18 months touring Ismaili communities around the world, the Aga Khan finished his studies, then embarked on a life that combined business with charitable and spiritual work, said The Times. He built up the Aga Khan Development Network, "one of the largest private development networks in the world", the aims of which range from working to eliminate poverty and advancing the status of women to honouring Islamic art; the Aga Khan Foundation, which focuses on healthcare and education in the world's poorest communities; the Aga Khan Trust for Culture; and the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London (he held British citizenship). Between them, they have about 100,000 staff in more than 30 countries.

In 1960, Prince Aly Khan was killed in a car crash, and his racing studs passed to his heirs. The Aga Khan didn't know much about thoroughbred breeding then, but he decided to take on the business – and became engrossed by it. "It's so exciting, a constant challenge," he said. "Every time you sit down and breed you are playing a game of chess with nature." He also loved to ski, owned a £100 million superyacht and an island in the Bahamas. His personal wealth was estimated at up to $13 billion; he also managed (and supplemented) funds accrued from tithes paid by Ismailis (10% to 12.5% of their income), which were used for their benefit. His many and varied business interests included the transformation of an undeveloped stretch of Sardinia's northeast coast into the Emerald Coast, a destination for the global rich. He married and divorced twice and is survived by his four children. The fifth Aga Khan is Rahim Al-Hussaini, the eldest of his three sons.