JK Rowling was not joking when she said her next book would be "very different" to the magical world of Harry Potter. Yesterday it emerged her first novel aimed at adults would follow parish council elections in an English market town. The celebrated British author's first book in five years will be called The Casual Vacancy, and will be a "blackly comic" tale of an idyllic English town at war itself, the publishers revealed.

Caryl Brahms, an astute critic and a funny writer, said that characters in Chekhov always harked back to their beginnings but learnt no lesson from their past; they were content to sit around the samovar and talk.

Harry Potter stars turned out yesterday at the red carpet opening of a studio tour which gives fans a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the blockbuster film series.

Fifteen-year-old fan Holly Hatfield guides us – and her dad – through the astonishing new Warner Bros Harry Potter tour near Watford

Tomorrow, The Making of Harry Potter tour opens to the British public – and it's wizard, says 15-year-old Holly Hatfield, who's had a sneak peek

Harry Potter author JK Rowling has signed a deal to publish her first novel for adults.

HBO's new drama features the oldest cast on television. It's a must-see, says Sarah Hughes

When you make shelving a feature, rather than a bland device to store clutter, the stuff you display tends to look (and get treated) better...

Nosing at other people's homes from the top of the bus after dark, I always marvel at so many rooms robbed of atmosphere by dependence on stark central ceiling lights. A lamp or two is a start – but what else can you do with lighting to transform a space?

After moving from a small flat to a whole house, I panicked: I had little furniture, no budget and zero direction. Inspiration was clouded by the threat of expensive mistakes and "blank canvas" alarm. So where can one turn for ideas?

Caryl Churchill's play could not, at first glance, be more topical – on the day of its opening, the doctor who developed IVF won a Nobel Prize. But, on second hearing, the 50-minute two-hander seems less impressive than when Michael Gambon and Daniel Craig performed it on its premiere in 2002 or when Timothy and Sam West, the current cast, did so in Sheffield in 2006.

It's a year since Michael Gambon was obliged to abandon rehearsals for Alan Bennett's Habit of Art because of a health scare. What a pleasure, therefore, to be able to welcome the fully restored actor back to the London stage now in Michael Colgan's powerful production of Krapp's Last Tape, which has transferred from Dublin's Gate Theatre. One wonders whether there's an element of witty defiance in Gambon's decision to give us a portrayal of the great Beckett protagonist that so pointedly highlights the fact that he's not long for this world. There's certainly no danger of any further tapes from the chronically dilapidated, terminally enfeebled figure he cuts here.