The Week In Books

Mike Wallace, the dogged American television news reporter and interviewer who took on politicians and celebrities in a 60-year career, has died. He was 93.

I've enjoyed some of Karl Jenkins's work, but this is fairly unbearable: based on texts from "peacemakers", it ends up as an all-encompassing assemblage of white-hatted do-gooders rather than a coherent piece.

David Harewood has criticised the lack of opportunities for young black actors in the UK and has advised them to consider heading to the US.

The only time I saw the late Gil Scott-Heron perform was in a New York nightclub in 2001. I had huge expectations of this iconic, radical, spoken-word artist and musician whose jazz-funk syncopations and uncompromising lyrics spawned generations of imitators. But it was already too late to see the great man as he once was. He would soon be busted for the drug addiction that led to two spells in prison. That night, his crack-ravaged performance was so bad, the audience talked over him.

The 400th anniversary of the King James Bible has spawned a shelf of celebrations. Many have relished the evergreen words that the 1611 translators –and their forerunners, above all William Tyndale – brought into our speech and writing.

Things carved in stone tend to stay that way forever, but that doesn't concern the poet Maya Angelou, who thinks a quotation attributed to Martin Luther King Jr that appears on a newly unveiled memorial in Washington should be changed because it makes him sound like a "twit".

Out of America: The figure of Martin Luther King stands 30ft high, in a monumental tribute to his stirring reconciliation speech made 48 years ago today

Jack Kevorkian, the controversial pathologist who campaigned for the right to die and earned the nickname "Dr Death" for helping dozens of terminally-ill patients commit suicide, has died after a short but severe illness. He was 83.

Tourism officials have been left red-faced after claiming that Martin Luther King wrote his famous "I have a dream" speech at Liverpool's Adelphi hotel.

On 28 August 1963, Martin Luther King delivered his most famous speech for the cause of civil rights in front of 200,000 people in Washington DC.