Out of America: A new play recalls the huge political influence writers once had

Terry Spinks, the youngest Briton to win an Olympic boxing gold medal, has died at his home in Essex following a long illness. He was 74.

Cigarettes and alcohol; cars with tail fins; technological utopias and the lifestyle, clothes and accoutrements of the international jetsetter.

Roy Essoyan, who died on 22 March aged 92, was a reporter who in 1958 exposed a serious split between China and the Soviet Union. Born in a Japanese fishing village just after his refugee family, originally from Armenia, landed there in 1919 after fleeing the Russian revolution, Essoyan arrived in the Soviet Union nearly four decades later as an American journalist, having become a US citizen after the Second World War.

The first ever UK staging of one of Russia's most frequently performed plays A Warsaw Melody opens in London this week. Written by Leonid Zorin in 1967, it was staged some 4,000 times in its first year. "It's almost a contemporary Romeo and Juliet," says its London-based Russian director Oleg Mirochnikov, who is also a top Russian dialogue coach, who worked with the cast of X-Men: First Class and World War Z. "I think a lot of British theatre companies don't look beyond Chekov. Maybe its a lack of curiosity."

Cinematic dystopias are having a big year. The biggest, in fact, since 2009, when The Road and Terminator: Salvation both warned of a bad future. Now, we have The Hunger Games, which takes place in a US ravaged by some sort of (yes) "apocalyptic" event. Then there's the remake of Judge Dredd called Dredd. Finally, another dystopian remake, of Total Recall, set in a Fascist future where "Euroamerica" and "New Shanghai" vie for global superiority.

A Political Life

Romanian friends reunited against the elegant sweep of class, love and history

Peter Lowe was a distinguished international historian of the 20th century Asia-Pacific, the author of six major books covering half a century of developments in East Asia and Britain's reactions to them. He combed the archives of many countries, focusing on the period from 1911 when Britain – and the British Empire – were forces to be reckoned with, to the 1960s, when Britain had to limit her overseas interests. His careful scholarship over four decades was firmly founded on an admirable attention to primary sources.

The past is a foreign country in more ways than one for the protagonists of Douglas Kennedy's novel. Largely set in Cold War Berlin, this hard-hitting love story tears down the dividing walls between past and present, showing how the course of history can turn in an instant. An author of consistently engaging and clever bestsellers, Kennedy has ranged from Stateside dramas to noirish thrillers. The Moment pulls together both strains in his fiction, marrying romantic tragedy with Le Carré-style espionage.

Quantum non-locality? Far out, man

Meryl Streep has continued her awards run while silent film The Artist and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy have been showered with nominations at this year's Baftas.

Leopold Hawelka, owner of the legendary Viennese café that bore his name, was born the son of a Bohemian shoemaker in the village of Kautendorf in Austria's wine region. Moving with his family to Vienna in 1925, he was lucky to get an apprenticeship as a waiter, a respected profession, at one of the capital's best restaurants. In 1936 he married Josefine Danzberger, a butcher's daughter, who was also employed in the catering trade. Determined to succeed in business, they leased the modest Café Alt Wien.

If Britain or Nato were ever to contemplate a military intervention in Somalia, it would be incredible. And any hopes that even a lesser role in the country would be successful must be met with scepticism. Not because there aren't already foreign influences in the Horn of Africa nation – at the latest count there are five armies there – but because in all the decades of outside interference there hasn't been a single success.