William Forsythe’s Artifact is self-conscious and self-aware, a ballet about being a ballet. As dancers run through patterns or wind themselves into fractured duets, curtains descend with a thump or speakers try to pin down an act of memory. The Royal Ballet of Flanders could be tauter in Forsythe’s patterns, but push confidently through his games.

Of interest to students of art and deltiologists (collectors of postcards) alike, Jeremy Cooper's extensively illustrated book provides the first critical study of the place of the humble postcard in the history of art.

I'm all for cats at the opera – a fuzzy feline will always raise a smile. But isn't there something alarming about it when a mermaid meets one? We all know what cats do to fish. It looks as if that might happen to the unfortunate Rusalka, the eponymous heroine of Dvorak's post-Wagnerian take on The Little Mermaid, in the opera's first-ever production at the Royal Opera House.

Crying, talking, sleeping, walking, living dolls

Not enough story to tell – how very postmodern

Edinburgh's 122-year-old institution has had a 21st-century renovation

Richard Serra reveals the inspiration behind his 80ft landmark to Jay Merrick

Ghost stories are as much a part of Christmas as freezing fog and fortified wine. While not as well-known as masters of the genre such as MR James or Algernon Blackwood, Arthur Machen's remain among the most brilliant and disquieting tales of the supernatural.

It was typical of the self-aware, self-referential and self-deprecating “third Russell of comedy” to acknowledge that the X Factor final had taken a slither out of his audience share tonight.

An author has died. Let us begin to quote him. "Have I any posthumous last words?" Gilbert Adair asked at the end of his 1992 novel, The Death of the Author. "Not really. As I have discovered to my disappointment, death is merely the displaced name for a linguistic predicament, and I rather feel like asking for my money back – as perhaps you do too, Reader, on closing this mendacious and mischievous and meaningless book."

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Martin knew that being a milkman was his vocation when a little old lady started leaving full jars of jam and Branston Pickle out with her empties alongside a note asking him to “Please open”.

She has spawned art, films, music and merchandise and now a new exhibition