Cover Stories: Alwaleed: Businessman Billionaire Prince; Caroline Michel; Index on Censorship

Questions were asked last week about a series of full-page broadsheet advertisements promoting a biography of Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Alsaud, the American-educated nephew of the late Saudi King Fahd, who is rumoured to give away more than $100m a year. Indeed, Americans like to think of him as "the Saudi Warren Buffet", the multimillionaire investor who last week sold his memoirs for $7m. Alwaleed: Businessman Billionaire Prince, an authorised life by Riz Khan, is published by HarperCollins in what cynics were suggesting might be a so-called vanity deal. It's not clear whether the Prince is a business associate of Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corp owns HarperCollins. Given his great wealth - the Prince is among Forbes' top five of the world's wealthiest - any advance would be neither here nor there. For a Saudi prince, he is notably enlightened: he hired the first female airline pilot in Saudi Arabia, where women still cannot legally drive a car.

Caroline Michel has just returned from her first Frankfurt as an agent - she joined William Morris only last month, the latest gamekeeper to turn poacher. And already her well-thumbed address book is paying dividends - she has taken on the representation of Richard Attenborough, a colleague of Michel's husband Matthew Evans, Labour's Chief Whip in the Lords. But it appears the project has long done the rounds and found no takers. Will La Michel's powers have the desired effect?

Freedom of expression has never been more threatened than it is now, so Sunday's fundraiser for Index on Censorship could scarcely be more timely. Stars of stage and screen, among them Christopher Eccleston and Saffron Burrows, will feature in a rehearsed reading of Rachel Wagstaff's Night Sky, "a tale of truth, lies love and cockroaches". The event takes place at 7pm on Sunday 30 October at London's Old Vic. Tickets from 0870 060 6628.