We must all have books we like so much that we don't want other people to make films of them

Football: England coach runs out of support at the FA and faces the sack despite a shortage of likely successors

If you're a teacher with children of your own, would you encourage them to follow your own career path?

ENGLAND, EAGER to re-establish a progressive identity, has commissioned the design of a stunning, vast, and vastly expensive dome from the venerable British architect Lord Rogers of Riverside to launch the new millennium. After all, the country is home to Greenwich, the global fulcrum of measured time itself and therefore a perfectly reasonable venue to mark this event in such grand fashion. The only problem is, no one can figure out exactly what to put inside it.

THE AGREEABLE WORLD OF WALLACE ARNOLD

IN 1924 George Bernard Shaw covered an exhibition baseball game between the Chicago White Sox and the New York Giants in London for a newspaper. Anticipating anthropologists and psychologists who would direct their attention to games, Shaw wrote this mocking introduction:

All things considered, this seems to be the right time to update that statement by George Bernard Shaw, to read:

Very Unusual Jobs Indeed

Sue MacGregor OBE, 57, is the BBC Radio Today presenter who complained last week that the new White City radio premises are like a goldfish bowl. She has worked for the BBC since 1967, as a reporter for World at One and then as a presenter for Woman's Hour, all on Radio 4. She has Honorary Doctorates from Nottingham and Dundee Universities and is Visiting Professor of Journalism at Nottingham Trent

Unlike almost anywhere else in Europe, on these shores the symphony never really caught on as a primary musical form, at least not until this century. Few British symphonies dating from before 1900 exist; of those that do, only a couple by Parry and Stanford are ever played these days. In fact, the history of the British symphony does not seem officially to start until 1908 with Elgar's magisterial first - the prototypical and quintessential English symphony. It is a tremendously vibrant and superbly structured piece, described by its first conductor, Hans Richter, as "the greatest symphony of modern times, and not only in this country".

Back in the 1960s, an MP in the House of the Commons once said that the only sensible political debate in this country was taking place in Till Death Us Do Part.

New Queen's Hall Orchestra Barbican, London

Jonathan Bate cheers a Romantic champ, and his modern fan

WHILE some of the most famous celebrities in the world partied the night away at post-Oscar bashes last night, there was a much more discreet gathering in London, attended by anyone who really is anyone.