A book penned by a TV actress turned author and scholar has won the first award handed out by an educational charity dedicated to the experience and international understanding of Shakespeare in performance.

Long-running West End show Chicago - which has featured an array of star names - is to close after nearly 15 years.

The President prepares to make some savage cuts

What happens when Tom wigs out? Not much sex, no drugs and naff-all rock'n'roll

Are you already depressed by the wedding fever, the dress speculation, the Wills 'n' Kate dolls, the Mills & Boon tie-in books, the crowds of otherwise sane people waving Union flag bunting as another perfectly nice-seeming girl is led to the slaughter? Well, just be grateful that the royal couple are not expecting to be paid for getting married. Prince William and Kate Middleton have asked that anyone thinking of buying them a wedding gift should give the money to a charity instead. For 35 per cent of Britain's other engaged couples, though, cash or vouchers is what they want.

She is blessed with charm, beauty and artistic credibility – but now the actress has shown courage in revealing a hidden illness

Catherine Zeta-Jones has checked into a clinic with depression after supporting her husband, Michael Douglas, in his fight against cancer.

Perhaps I was a touch premature writing what a treat it was to delve into the readers’ letters...

I felt like a soft-boiled egg, a dissected frog, a jellied blob of sea anemone pecked by the cruel beaks of seabirds": Jane Shilling's memoir is an exuberant epitaph on youth, a girlie chat, an album of memories and reflections on identity, memory, the ageing female body and that other woman over there in the mirror who is not myself. Just cannot be. And is. Je est un autre. The book is a lovely, easy read: Shilling's style, dashingly cavalier and artfully artless, bubbles with wit and brio. Never was a lament less lugubrious.

Fans call it 'heresy', but if Doctor Who is to become even better, says Ben Walsh, the show should consider a sex change

Quatuor Ebène seem the string quartet most likely to take on the mantle of the Kronos Quartet, not least for their ability to accommodate jazz and pop influences.

Hollywood seems obsessed with synthetic female stars. Ben Walsh watches Katherine Heigl, Angelina Jolie and the rest, and pines for the days of Carrie Fisher and Teri Garr

Michael Douglas has a tumour in his throat and will undergo radiation and chemotherapy.

Those lucky enough to have secured themselves a ticket for the Stephen Sondheim Prom – one of the first and fastest to sell out – did so knowing that the great American composer was planning to turn up to take a bow.