E L James' Fifty Shades of Grey has sold more than 5.3m copies making it the best-selling British book of all time, according to figures released by its publisher.

Renowned Australian art critic and historian Robert Hughes has died after a long illness. He was 74.

My first book came about over a bet I had a drunken conversation with a friend about some day writing a book, and she said, "If you write me three chapters, I'll take you for dinner at your favourite restaurant." So I did [the resulting book, Ralph's Party, was the biggest-selling debut novel of 1999], and she made me send it out to agents. When one of those agents liked it and told me Penguin wanted to pay me £120,000 to write my first two books, I thought everyone had gone mad.

Lola De La Cruz cried when she met author E L James. The 29-year-old fan had waited since 4am to accomplish the number one thing on her Comic-Con to-do list - meet the writer of "Fifty Shades of Grey" - and 12 hours later, she got her chance.

Fifty Shades of Grey has sparked a “revolution” in women’s reading habits according to the romance literature giants Mills & Boon, and the subsequent surge in sales has prompted them to re-release some of their most erotic works.

A little-known British author has topped the New York Times bestseller list with an erotic novel described in the US as "mommy porn".

Salma Hayek, whose résumé includes roles in movies From Dusk Till Dawn, Wild Wild West and Frida as well as regular character outings in TV series Ugly Betty and 30 Rock, is also an accomplished producer.

What people loved about the Two Fat ladies was the sheer anarchy of it Two fat old bats on a Triumph, travelling around the country and cooking. The impact we had felt particularly brilliant: I found out recently we single-handedly saved the Gloucester Old Spot pig breed from dying out, after we did a programme about it.