Steve Lamacq wiped tears from his eyes before he walked on-stage and recalled the “emotional three months” when it seemed the radio station he works for would never reach its tenth birthday, which was celebrated tonight, as the BBC planned 6 Music’s death.

Bands like The Cranberries must beware of cashing in on nostalgia, says Elisa Bray

History is just a series of dates

Step three of Madness' revival is staged in a holiday camp in an off-season Somerset resort town.

Further to your obituary of Jackie Leven (17 November), when I was writing a book about the British on holiday, and wanted to include a chapter on cruising, a mutual friend put me in touch with the singer-songwriter, who in his droll Scottish manner told me about his experience as the "entertainment" on a two-week cruise of the Norwegian fjords in 2002.

Colette and Hannah Thurlow, the London-based sisters behind 2:54, first appeared in this column in the summer of 2010 as an unsigned band touting an early demo of shoegaze/new wave-inflected gloomy guitar pop on Myspace (ind.pn/c08ayP).

The Iraq Inquiry has delayed its report by at least six months as it argues with the Government over the release of top-secret documents.

Producer Joe Henry writes a brilliant sleevenote arguing that great artists transcend genre.

Sales are at a 10-year high, record players are back

Afro-pop folk band Givers don't have a slogan, but if they did it would be "It's nice to be nice". The singers, Taylor Guarisco and Tiffany Lamson perform with the emphatic smiles of drama school children in panto. Their music is uplifting; to watch them is like watching happy Muppets dancing around, on ecstasy. They're aggressively happy – they bounce, and wiggle and gyrate and smile a lot. They even use the break between songs to tell us how much they love London ("I love that you drive on the left here. I really do," says Lamson).

Assailed by the double debilitations of leukemia and dementia, and requiring hospital care, Etta James has sensibly decided that The Dreamer will constitute the final chapter of her recording career.

War has always inspired great music, says Jessica Duchen, but since 9/11 classical has fallen behind pop in a world racked by conflict