'For a good holiday, you need someone to hate'

In 2008, Tom Lubbock, The Independent's influential art critic, was diagnosed with a rare brain tumour – and for two years, he kept a remarkable diary. Here, his wife Marion Coutts introduces an extract.

One famous pirate lost out to a whole family of them when the Waterstone's Children's Book Prize was awarded.

Ralph McQuarrie designed several futuristic films but is best-known for visualising the landscapes of Star Wars and designing characters including Chewbacca, R2-D2 andC-3PO. It led to more "space" projects but he also worked on other science-fiction and fantasy projects and won an Oscar for Cocoon.

Ralph McQuarrie designed several futuristic films but is best-known for visualising the landscapes of Star Wars and designing characters including Chewbacca, R2-D2 andC-3PO. It led to more "space" projects but he also worked on other science-fiction and fantasy projects and won an Oscar for Cocoon.

The days of sitting around the record player have fallen further into history, alongside fireside story-telling, as more music listeners seek solo aural satisfaction. Sales of headphones now outstrip those of speakers by almost two to one, according to the analysts, GfK, and Asda.

Simms Taback was an award-winning children's author and illustrator.

Malcolm Fowler was a part of that generation of art directors, writers, designers, photographers and film- makers who revolutionised British advertising in the 1970s and 1980s. The names of David Puttnam, Alan Parker, Ridley Scott and Hugh Hudson are familiar to many through their work in cinema, but talent requires and attracts talent, and the creative blooming in film and magazine advertising required comparable energy, imagination and panache from everyone involved.

Charles Dickens enjoyed close collaborative relationships with the illustrators of his novels, but now it's rare to find a picture outside the world of children's books. Is drawing a lost art, or could we be on the brink of a new golden age?

Can the world of art and fashion help to make the lab as cool as the club? Samuel Muston meets the publishers, artists and companies putting the 'fun' into 'fundamental science'

Samuel Muston meets the publishers, artists and companies putting the 'fun' into fundamental science.

New Year Honours: The Arts

Phil Spector may have been able to find the most dramatic settings for some voices, but he met his match in Leonard Cohen's lugubrious baritone: the album they made together, Death Of A Ladies' Man, remains Cohen's least listenable, described by the singer himself as "grotesque", his voice a desperate hostage to the echoey-dungeon arrangements.

Not for nothing was Phil Spector known as the Tycoon Of Teen: Philles, the label he formed a year earlier with old-school record executive Lester Sill, became in 1962 Spector's alone, making him, at 21, the youngest label head in America.