His pen-name was created from two characters in Grimm's fairy tales, but his novels had little in common with the moralistic fantasies of mittel-Europe. Rudolf Ditzen was a magistrate's son, raised in Berlin and immersed in Dickens, Flaubert and Dostoevsky. He became one of the greatest German authors of the 20th century, but was not translated into English until 2009.

One in eight deaths of UK adults under the age of 64 is caused by alcohol, an international conference on tackling problem drinking has heard.

A takeaway boss has been jailed for 15 years after paying under-age girls for sex and inciting others to become child prostitutes.

Jazz has a lot of people in her life who seem eager to big her up, which is handy because there are several reasons why she might need a boost. The very least of them curiously is Jazz's size, the result of an unspecified form of dwarfism.

"They're not freaks," said the psychotherapist Stelios Kiosses about the subjects of The Hoarder Next Door.

The Vice of the People represents a passing of the folk-rock baton to another generation, Ashley Hutchings' son Blair Dunlop taking the reins and, with a coterie of young players, injecting youthful fire into the band's trad-folk stylings.

Despite the linkage suggested by the hyphen, Handel and Caldara never worked together; rather, the latter replaced the former as composer to Cardinal Ruspoli in Rome.

The Government is wasting money by policing minor drugs offences, the comedian and former heroin addict Russell Brand told MPs today.

Eugene O'Neill's tragedy about a blighted and bitter clan embroiled in internecine conflict is given a masterly treatment

As so many controversies do these days, it started with a tweet. "Just killed back-to-back spin classes. Eating a salad dreaming of a cheeseburger #Pop SingersDontEat #IWasBornThisWay", tweeted Lady Gaga to her 22 million followers earlier this week.

Eugène Ysaÿe's 1924 sonatas anticipate the memorial beauty of Karl Amadeus Hartmann's Suites for Unaccompanied Violin by three years and the desolate fury of Bartók's Sonata for Solo Violin by two decades.

Life on Marsden

Hoarding can take over people's lives and homes, but only now is it being recognised as a distinct psychological disorder. Emily Jupp meets members of the first therapy group for sufferers

It's about intrinsic beauty, inner spirit, a synecdochical relationship with nature. It's also about battling it out on a cold spring morning to see whose tree is tops. Matthew Bell joins Britain's hardcore bonsai enthusiasts – in Swindon, of all places.