I've given a lot of thought to books that hold a significant meaning for me; the books that have stayed with me long after the final page has been turned. There are many books that have shaped me. To select one feels like an impossible task, like choosing between salade niçoise and buttery mashed potatoes. I love both at different times of the year.

“I am making an appeal to the world – do not come to Bugarach.” Not the kind of pro-tourism message you’d expect from a mayor. But pity poor Jean-Pierre Delord of Bugarach in France, who is putting off visitors who believe his town’s Pic de Bugarach mountain is due to open up and spit out human-saving aliens during today’s Mayan-predicted apocalypse.

Film choice

"We shan't go to Camelot, 'tis a silly place," as Monty Python pointed out, and the BBC's sword-and-sorcery drama is pretty silly. It's also, however, enormous fun.

It's easy to build a classic but current capsule wardrobe. Lee Holmes selects the everyday essentials that will see you through rain and shine

Talking loudly at a pop concert these days can get you reprimanded – and don't even think of spilling your beer. Fiona Sturges applauds the new etiquette

Colin Diamond (Ray Winstone), a gangster, spends much of this film snivelling about his estranged wife and struggling to decide whether to kill the French waiter she's sleeping with.

Never mind Monsters vs Aliens, the three-word pitch of Outlander is "Vikings vs Aliens", as Jim Caviezel's spaceman crashlands in eighth-century Norway with a fire-breathing beastie in the hold.

Alien vs... Viking? You'd better believe it.

Raised from their stasis-like sleep, the crew of the spaceship Nostromo have stopped to investigate a mysterious distress signal. It's not a good move. In the ruins of an ancient craft in a windswept planet they discover a cargo of giant eggs. John Hurt bends over to peer at one. In a flash, a terrifying organism has attached itself to his face. Taken back to the ship, he remains unconscious until the creature appears to die and fall off. But in the mess hall of the Nostromo he convulses - and a gruesome junior alien bursts from his chest, spraying the onlookers with blood. It's gone down in film legend as the event that Ridley Scott concealed from 28-year-old Sigourney Weaver and her co-stars, hoping to catch real expressions of fear and revulsion.

When Jean-Pierre Jeunet got the call to go to Hollywood to direct the latest `Alien' film, he knew it was time to learn some English, get on a plane, and compromise the principles of a lifetime.

Cavendish Square seems, calmer than other London squares - slightly old-fashioned, less hurly-burly, even cleaner than others; almost a film set vision of London as it is supposed to be. So it's the right place to come across John Hurt, that most versatile, most gentlemanly, most British of actors.

Thomas Mann's gay 'Lolita' has been done to death. But one British director was determined to make a film of the novel inspired by the film of the original. And set it in Swiss Cottage. Roger Clarke went on location to find out why