Depending on whom you talk to, there are either a glut of brilliant women jostling to grab a seat in Britain's boardrooms, or a dearth of strong female candidates. Either way, the feminisation of UK plc is continuing at a moderate pace. If the non-executive Class of 2012 don't cut the mustard, we will find out soon enough.

Considering the number of times film and television have revisited Sherlock Holmes and Robin Hood, it's surprising that this pair have vanished, despite all efforts to revive them.

Smug Tweeters. Gurning Techno stilt loons. Naked am-dram mums. Bewildered teens. Key parts of any festival, says Nick Moore

Back in the early 1970s, Luton's population is mainly white and working-class, with a handful of Afro-Caribbean families. Among them are the Grants and, in the person of the eponymous Bageye, they have a formidable paterfamilias. Bageye takes his meals alone in Victorian fashion, eating before his wife and five pickney. The pickney try to make themselves invisible, because they go in perpetual fear of their father.

Britain is at war. The pampered baby boomers have feathered their nests at the expense of an increasingly besieged and impoverished young generation. George Osborne's "granny tax", the Budget's freeze in pension allowances, will hit a group in society that has barely been touched by austerity, and in any case it's peanuts compared with what others are expected to cough up.

Outlook Back in the late 1990s, the distinguished fund management house Schroders suffered such a chronic period of duff stock-picking that unkind souls in the City dubbed the firm Skodas.

Literary fairy tales are fighting back. Margo Lanagan's Tender Morsels, a superb re-writing of Snow-White and Rose Red, is a case in point. Now there is the equally striking The Snow Child, a first novel by Eowyn Ivey, a writer from Alaska. Don't expect anything fey or sentimental; both novels are as tough as they come.

Four years ago Anne Nolan spoke out after a childhood of abuse. She explains what happened next

The average age of retirement has risen, official figures showed today, as those approaching state pension age struggle to pay for their later years.

 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.

David Beckham's admission that he has only three good friends rings true

The retailer's critics say its management is out of touch. Now the PM has returned to the issue of females in boardrooms

How to crash the London literary scene