Blooms of Darkness by Aharon Appelfeld has won this year's Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. The Israeli author, who shares the £10,000 award with his translator Jeffrey M Green, is the first writer in Hebrew to take the leading British honour for fiction in translation and, 80 this year, he is also the oldest winner

Music fans will be able to rifle through the contents of John Peel's record collection as the late DJ's huge archive begins to be opened to the public from today.

It is a record collection that any vinyl enthusiast would covet. From obscure German techno to Appalachian folk music, to the latest sounds in the rock and pop world; the thousands of carefully catalogued albums owned by the late DJ John Peel literally have something for everyone.

"When I tell people I crotchet animals they immediately lose interest," says Leicestershire-based artist Shauna Richardson. But in her hands, the quaint and grannyish technique of crochet is in no way dull. She calls her craft "crochetdermy", a mashing of words that neatly describes the knitting of life-size animal heads that can be mounted on walls.

It called for soul-searching and sacrifice but, after much impassioned debate, the shortlist for this year's Independent Foreign Fiction Prize took the shape that you see here. If anything, the panel of judges – Xiaolu Guo, Jon Cook, Nick Barley, Hephzibah Anderson and myself – had to contend with an embarrassment of riches. Whatever our perennial regrets about the limited quantity of fiction brought into English from other languages, the quality of translations felt as bold and bright as ever. In Britain, we owe so much of our view of global fiction to independent publishers of various shapes and sizes. Responsible for around two-thirds of all submissions for the Independent prize, they contribute five out of the six titles on this list – although I ought to stress that neither commercial nor geographical provenance ever sways the decision.

Business Secretary Vince Cable today weighed into the increasingly bitter row over Chancellor George Osborne's controversial cap on tax relief for charitable donations.

'We swim in the Cam, but only for 30 seconds, otherwise we'd go blue'

As Archdruid of Wales from 1979 to 1981, Geraint Bowen was renowned for his hard-hitting speeches from the Logan Stone in the ceremonies of the Assembly of Bards of the Isle of Britain (the Gorsedd). Not only did he speak out against the Anglicisation of Wales and in defence of the Welsh language, as Archdruids are expected to do, but also lent his authority to the campaign for a fourth television channel broadcasting in Welsh and against the burying of nuclear waste. In this he ran the risk of upsetting some of the more pusillanimous officers of the National Eisteddfod, to which the Gorsedd is closely affiliated.

Skream, Benga and Artwork give the inside track on their meteoric rise at the Volvo Snowbombing festival in Austria.

It's spring and everything is new, or at least the old stuff has been shuffled around a bit. Radcliffe and Maconie have gone to 6 Music, Fi Glover has left Saturday Live and the BBC has decided to make a virtue of déjà vu by rebranding BBC 7 as Radio 4 Extra. This new network is plainly designed to up the numbers listening on DAB, in which the BBC is heavily invested, but the mix makes you wonder exactly who it's for. Is it people who like Hancock and the Goons, in other words Prince Charles? But then I can't imagine Prince Charles tuning in for Arthur Smith's Balham Bash, amusing though it is, or indeed the strange melange of stories and interviews in The 4 O'Clock Show, which wants an "audience of all ages" – ie children. Then again the star of the new line-up is Ambridge Extra, which being focused on the junior Archers might suggest a bid for the youth vote. But as it turns out, existing Archers fans need not fear. The first episode, in which Alice and Chris's long-distance marriage starts to come unstuck and Kirsty tries to organise a fun run, is recognisably the same series. No one whinges like an Archer whinges, no matter what age they are.

Cultural institutions across the country have been "wiped off the map" by Arts Council England's funding cuts, announced yesterday. Regular funding to 206 arts organisations, from fringe theatres to poetry societies and renowned organisations in dance and art, has been axed.