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The Big Picture: Just blood, sweat and fears

LOVE IS THE DEVIL (18) DIRECTOR: JOHN MAYBURY

It was hell, darling, sheer hell

After a grubby dispute between Equity and the advertising industry, Britain's finest thespians are at last free to sell washing powder. Nicole Veash gives a tantrum-by-tantrum account of the voice-over war

Today's pick: The British Academy Television Awards

The British Academy Television Awards (8.30pm ITV) The Oscars get Billy Crystal - we get Bob Monkhouse, who will probably be dusting down his famous joke books as we go to press. This year the awards for film and television have been separated, and tonight is the turn of the TV folk. Francesca Annis, Kathy Burke, Derek Jacobi and Robert Carlyle are amongst those up for the famous gilded masks.

The pay's the thing ...

Theatre's reservoir of talent is drying up because of low wages, says Paul McCann

Independent choice: audio books

Audiobooks are, much more than the written word, "the words of a dead man modified in the guts of the living", as Auden puts it in "In Memory of WB Yeats". Badly done, they are infuriatingly intrusive on the intimate tete a tete between book and reader. But converts to audiobooks know how much added value they can provide: readers who enrich thrillers with suspenseful menace or illuminate difficult texts with lucid emphases, a painless dripfeed through dauntingly long classics, the opportunity to hear a great actor or, most fascinating of all, the voice of the author himself. On journeys they are especially attractive, shortening the longueurs of motorways, soothing one to sleep in strange hotel rooms.

Expert eye: No 4: Robert Harris on 'Breaking the Code'

It wasn't really a film about code breaking, it was a film about social attitudes to homosexuality. A few of the facts were altered within the bounds of dramatic licence: Turing, for example, started working on the Enigma machine before the war and not after.

Throwing the gag out with the bathwater

the week on television

If the SS cap fits

Why are British actors always being asked to play Nazis? And why do they look so good in the bad guys' clothes? Maybe because the Nazis themselves were so very theatrical. By Jasper Rees

Theatre Uncle Vanya Chichester Festival Theatre

There's a story that one of our greatest actors was once wooed to appear in a production of Uncle Vanya but that he took great offence (and indeed took off) when he realised that it was Astrov he was being invited to play. "That is not the name on the title page," he majestically reminded the director.

The Pulpit, Shrewsbury Abbey, Shropshire

site unseen

TELEVISION & RADIO: review

Boxing Night was, for no apparent reason, medieval mystery night. On BBC2, Colin Firth swapped Darcy's jodhpurs for a smock and a fancy cod-piece to do battle for truth, justice and porcine rights in 14th-century France in The Hour of the Pig (BBC2). Meanwhile, a alrge part of the ITV schedules was consumed by a feature length version of Cadfael, the adventures of Derek Jacobi's 12th-century monk with the 20th-century forensic skills. The kind of night, you might think, when charades seem like a good idea.

2 for 1 Audio Books offer with the The Independent

In a hi-tech, fast-paced world simple pleasures can often be the most satisfying. And few pleasures are more simple or more satisfying than listening to a good story well told.

Brother Cadfael's creator dies aged 82

THE bestselling writer Ellis Peters, who created the Brother Cadfael medieval mystery novels, died yesterday aged 82 after suffering a stroke.

The knight of a thousand stars

Olivier did it. Garrick did it. And now Jacobi's doing it. But do actors make good managers? Georgina Brown puts the question to Sir Derek, Chichester Festival Theatre's new artistic director, and his minder, the West End producer Duncan Weldon
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'To farm I have to rape the countryside. It’s got to be wrong': The true effect of the badger cull

The true effect of the badger cull

'To farm I have to rape the countryside. It’s got to be wrong'
Theatre review: Daniel Radcliffe gives an admirably honest performance in Michael Grandage's The Cripple of Inishmaan

First night: The Cripple of Inishmaan

Daniel Radcliffe gives an admirably honest performance in Michael Grandage's comedy
Girls Guides drop religious reference but pledge to self and the Queen

Guides drop religious reference but pledge to self and the Queen

After 103 years, organisation changes oath to welcome 'all girls, of all faiths, and none'
Steve Tongue: Joe Kinnear was one of the boys and a breath of fresh air... 21 years ago

Steve Tongue

Joe Kinnear was one of the boys and a breath of fresh air... 21 years ago
Chris Froome: Free from 'pain in neck' after Bradley Wiggins' exit

Chris Froome: Free from 'pain in neck' after Wiggins' exit

Sky's lead rider says he is in fantastic form for the Tour and happy pecking order debate is over
Hannah England: I've got the right times – now to focus on the chess

Hannah England: Keeping Track

I've got the right times – now to focus on the chess
Beards, brawn and body art

Beards, brawn and body art

Meet London’s new batch of male models
Scandi-geeks descend on Nordicana for fan-convention

Scandi-geeks descend on Nordicana for fan-convention

British love of shows such as The Bridge, Borgen and The Killing shows no sign of fading
Behind the rhetoric what is really being done to combat desertification?

The Great Green Wall of Africa,

Behind the rhetoric what is really being done to combat desertification?
Laughter Inc: the cheering growth of the chuckle industry

Laughter Inc

The cheering growth of the chuckle industry
The bad science scandal: how fact-fabrication is damaging UK's global name for research

The bad science scandal

How fact-fabrication is damaging UK's global name for research
To the manor born: The female aristocrats battling to inherit the title

Female aristocrats battle to inherit the title

A passionate protest is gathering pace among the women of Britain's aristocracy, who believe that men should no longer automatically inherit the family pile and title.
Love struck: Photographs of JFK's visit to Berlin 50 years ago reveal a nation instantly smitten

In pictures: JFK's visit to Berlin in 1963

Photographer Ulrich Mack accompanied Kennedy on the entire trip. The results are an astonishing record of a watershed moment.
Eat shoots and leaves: Mark Hix gets creative with fresh peas, mangetouts and sugar snaps

Mark Hix gets creative with English peas

English peas and their offsprings, such as mangetouts and sugar snaps, are great tossed into a salad, says our chef.
Ceviche with a smile: Chef Martin Morales has turned South America's elegant cuisine into one of London's hottest food trends

Chef Martin Morales: Ceviche with a smile

Morales has turned South America's elegant cuisine into one of London's hottest food trends