Instant success has come as a surprise to Michael Groce, who turned a very troubled past into award-winning poetry

Sir: I write in response to Polly Toynbee's article on "How Welfare to Work will succeed (yet still fail)" (22 September).

Like many people who discover they are dying, Malcolm Eccles set about providing for his wife's needs after he was gone. He considered how he could help her best then had himself reincarnated as an egg timer.

Mic Moroney discovers Martin McDonagh's trilogy of treasures

A leading charity for homeless young people yesterday warned of pitfalls in the Government's welfare-to-work proposals, the centrepiece of next month's budget.

It began in the parliamentary Labour Party - hereinafter known as Blair's Docile Fusiliers. And now the same siren voices can be heard among the EuroBrothers and EuroSisters: can't we have a leader more like the Prime Minister?

Two leading British artists have new exhibitions in the West End. David Hockney is the more famous, but it was Euan Uglow's show that sold out immediately. For he is the better painter

Focus on London: prices are rising rapidly south of the Thames

The Charity Commissioners are investigating the reported disappearance of tens of thousands of pounds at black-led evangelical and Pentecostal churches.

`I can't afford Monet, Manet or Renoir, so I decided to go for Pissarro, and the like'

VISUAL ARTS Lucie Rie and Hans Coper Barbican Art Gallery, London

Gillian Ayres Royal Academy, London

The Beastly British Cowards have done it again. Beeb bosses have caved in to Tory pressure even before the party chairman, Dr Brian Mawhinney, can toll them (that's how it comes out in his Ulster brogue) who should cover the party leaders at election time.

In appearance and in life, Jane Lidderdale epitomised the English virtue of understatement.