Damon Albarn, the multi-faceted musician and lead singer of Blur, has criticised the Olympics for being "too corporate," despite agreeing to play a concert to celebrate the closing of the Games.

Postcard from Würzburg

In news to dismay many music fans, Stock, Aitken and Waterman are getting the gang back together for a reunion gig. But will Kylie come too? By Simon Usborne

People who missed out on Olympics tickets in the first and second ballots are to be given the first opportunity to buy tickets when the remaining 1 million go on sale in April. Games organisers are considering allowing a 24-hour headstart for the estimated one million people who bid for tickets but didn't receive any.

High-profile gigs by stars including Madonna will go ahead as planned in London's Hyde Park this summer after a decision by councillors.

Got a spare $50m and can't stand the queues at Heathrow? Get yourself down to London's first private plane dealership. Tim Walker checks in

 My fingers were achingly sore and my head was spinning. I still had a sticky label stuck to me that read Lady Audley, and the phrase ‘goal-mate’ was echoing in my ears. There was a stick on moustache stuck to my handbag, and I had spent all night avoiding penalties and red cards. I had been speed dating.

The King's Troop Royal Horse Artillery took to London's streets yesterday, looking as if they had stepped out of a film about the Crimean War, as part of the ceremonies to mark the Queen's Diamond Jubilee.

There are plenty of press-ups to be done, but a new military-style fitness break in Fuerteventura is no boot camp

First it was One Hyde Park. Now London has a new most expensive address – just up the road. But with awful traffic and nowhere to buy milk, it's a wonder the super-rich want to live there at all

I'll intercede," promises Roly in "A Welcome for the River God" as the Lithuanian narrator is abused by passing yobs in a Mazda. The fifteen linked tales of Robert Minhinnick's collection have an intercessive quality, mediating the voiceless condition of migrants in lands far from home. Minhinnick's powerful work has an epic quality. While each short story is an individual fragment of testimony, in a minor key, the geographical range encompasses every continent - Albania, Mexico, China, Iraq, Israel, the United States, Britain. Perspectives challenge habitual norms: in the eyes of a Polish visitor to Bridgend, Wales, the writer's native land, is "the fag end of Europe". Minhinnick's twelve characters arouse in the reader a rising sense of dismay at the sheer variety and yet the lonely monotony and ubiquity of their plight.

Books Of The Year: Vegetable plots, and the red roots of a green revolution

The banners ranged from crude political slogans to a witty depiction of George Osborne as Edward Scissorhands.

The founder of King of Shaves, the British maker of shaving oils and razors, is set for a hefty windfall after receiving takeover approaches that could value the independent UK business at up to £45m.