When I first read The Transit of Venus, I was rather underwhelmed. I was in my twenties then and recently back in Australia after a period when I had thought I would make my life in France. I came to Shirley Hazzard's third novel by way of The Bay of Noon and The Evening of the Holiday. These ravishing early novels, both set in Italy, fed my nostalgia for Europe. I identified intensely with their young female protagonists whose private dramas were lifted into grandeur by the antique backgrounds against which they played out.

'Alien' was all killer and no filler – what a pity Ridley Scott's prequel is dazzled by its own good looks

'Alien' was all killer and no filler – what a pity Ridley Scott's prequel is dazzled by its own good looks

The opening performance which will kick off the Globe Theatre’s pre-Olympic  Shakespeare festival on April 21 is taking shape just a stone’s throw from South Africa’s parliament and President Zuma’s Cape Town office.

Peter O'Toole owes his life to Shagram, the "No. 1 camel" which – during the filming of Lawrence of Arabia - stood over the star after a fall as stampeding horses thundered past. Robert Irwin's erudite, droll and utterly delightful book about the life and lore of the dromedary (one hump) and Bactrian (two) abounds with details that reflect glory on a much-misundersstood animal.

Venus Williams ensured the Wimbledon final would be another family affair with a devastating performance against Russia's Dinara Safina.

Permit me a Mary Whitehouse moment, if you will, but at what stretch of whose imagination is showing children a group of women climaxing on prime-time television a good thing? I'm referring to a Durex advertisement (below) for a female "pleasure gel", which features young women reaching orgasm to the "Queen of the Night" aria from Mozart's Magic Flute.

Bursting at the seams with special effects, big names (Michelle Pfeiffer, Robert De Niro, Peter O'Toole, Ricky Gervais) and an epic storyline about witches, princes and pirates, Matthew Vaughn's fantasy adventure seems to have everything going for it. But maybe that's the problem. There are so many ingredients thrown in that there's no room left for the enchanting, magical atmosphere of Neil Gaiman's source novel. And without that magical atmosphere, we aren't seeing a wondrous fairy tale; we're seeing famous people in fancy dress wandering around a forest.

Did they consider a fig leaf? The Victorians made one for Michelangelo's David, and I'm sure someone could have come up with a version to protect the modesty of both Cranach's Venus and the delicate sensibilities of travellers on London's Tube trains. Two days ago, Transport for London suddenly reprieved the goddess of love, who had earlier been banned from advertising the Royal Academy's forthcoming exhibition of the work of the 16th-century German artist. It followed a similarly abrupt change of mind over a poster for a dance show in which a muscular naked man clutches a cuckoo clock in front of his genitals.