After some muted outings, the sketch group Pappy's are back to their lovable best, on the kind of form that saw them shortlisted for Edinburgh's comedy award in 2007 and will probably get them a place on this year's list, too.

Ravel effected an understated formal revolution in vocal music, the pieces performed here by mezzo-soprano Nora Gubisch with pianist Alain Altinoglu being notable for their commitment to textual interpretation rather than sheer operatic grandeur.

“So what happened in the first 15 minutes, did you just not like me?” asks Sarah Kendall of her audience at the end of her show. Observational comedians are supposed to say what everyone else is thinking but on this matter, Kendall is too close to the bone: her audience tonight just don’t buy into her.

Peter Godwin has written three pretty-much universally acclaimed, semi-autobiographical books about Zimbabwe. While When a Crocodile Eats the Sun is one of my favourite books of all time, I have yet to read the other two because I loved this one so intensely. It demanded so much, was so colourful, so wise, so... well, edifying, that I feel as though I have to do something amazingly heroic to earn the privilege of reading his others. It's anal, I know. I apply the same cracked logic to the books of my other all-time favourite author, Thomas Mann. Godwin – like Mann – writes literary caviar.

Sixteen gulls have been found dead in a seaside resort within the past week, prompting the RSPCA to call for greater tolerance of the birds.

The French are sensitive about their favourite dishes, as the fierce response to California's ban on the sale of foie gras has illustrated.

A campaign group has won a High Court battle over the agricultural use of Green Belt land formerly owned by broadcaster Jonathan Dimbleby for intensive poultry farming.

An experiment based on an Aesop's fable has shown how differently children and crows learn about the world.

Aggrieved diplomats in Paris to raise issue with US ambassador

'In bali, my favourite restaurant serves only duck, which you eat with your hands'

An investigation is under way after the mysterious deaths of 30 swans in Cardiff.

Danny Boyle, the artistic director of the opening ceremony for the London 2012 Olympics, has sent a hand-written letter to animal rights campaigners pledging that no harm will come to the animals used in the making of his show.

The hawk that patrols Wimbledon to deter pigeons has been stolen, police said.