Domestic Manners of the Americans is a traveller's account of the newborn republic between the War of Independence and the Civil War. An enchanting blend of topographical description, social commentary and robust rebuke, the book fizzes with the energy, fun and righteous indignation of a dumpy, middle-aged Bristolian called Fanny Trollope.

Dixieland descended upon the London Jazz Festival yesterday and transformed the Barbican into a New Orleans gospel church for one night only.

It's a troubling April down on the Delta, where the river is rising, and the blood too. "The crape myrtle's been out a week," says the genteel Mrs. Critchfeld. "I always start to wear white when the crape myrtle's out." Her daughter, however, worries she may never wear get to wear white and toss a bouquet. One of Tennessee Williams's high-strung beauties who are half spinster, half sexpot, Heavenly Critchfield is sleeping with the virile, shiftless Dick but tempted by the rich, repressed Arthur (a nice reversal of the traditional dilemma). The quartet of restive youth is completed by the librarian Hertha Neilson, "the most sensitive and intelligent person in Port Arthur, Mississippi", where teenagers she catches necking in the stacks laugh at her and call her an old maid.

Martin Strel, a fiftysomething Slovenian, is a chronic gambler, drink-driver and part-time teacher of Flamenco guitar who also happens to be the world's greatest endurance swimmer.

A Missouri woman was tricked into wiring about $4,000 to someone in England after receiving faked messages from a friend on Facebook asking for help, police said.

An 11-year-old boy in Mississippi accidentally killed his 9-year-old brother with a shotgun blast as the two struggled over the gun after arguing about a video game, authorities said.

It's been called one of the most revolutionary acts committed to film.

The blues guitarist and singer Willie King, who died on 8 March aged 66, started out on a plantation playing a home-made diddly-bo – an instrument consisting of a wire stretched along a board, struck with a stick while sliding a stone, bottle neck or pocket knife along the string to control the pitch.

How disconcerting to discover that Bob Dylan's neighbours are complaining about the smell from a portable lavatory on the singer's Malibu property.