While our image of Notting Hill today may be of a wealthy person's retreat, the area had a more bohemian and radical reputation when I was growing up. A combination of West Indian culture and a punky vibe made it irresistibly glamorous and edgy to me and my friends. It was the land of sound systems, skateboarders, the Clash, the Westway, the Mutoid Waste Company, the carnival and head shops on Portobello Road. It was home to Rough Trade (where I worked for a year when I was 21), Whole Earth foods, second-hand clothes shops and stalls on Portobello Green run by artists. It was the Notting Hill of Jimi Hendrix and of John Michell, the celebrated late cosmologist and author. I suppose it represented creative freedom.

Nathan Cleverly has pulled out of his WBO light-heavyweight title defence against Robin Krasniqi this month, because of a viral infection.

The people's favourites show they're still in a different class

Kate Winslet signed autographs as she walked the red carpet at the re-launch of the film that made her a star.

As austerity bites, the temples of culture will have to change and be at the centre of communities, says Nicholas Kenyon

As austerity bites, the temples of culture will have to change, says Nicholas Kenyon

Eric Clapton proved himself no slow hand in the moneymaking stakes again last year as he took a salary of nearly £4m out of his music business.

For the end of their London Christmas season, English National Ballet dive into Strictly Gershwin with a will. Derek Deane’s production blends ballet and ballroom, with a dollop of tap dancing and a fair bit of padding. The dancers do it all with care and attention. At the back of the American in Paris crowd scenes, you can spot corps dancers giving their steps a flirtatious edge.

A gang of 20 protesters were arrested outside the US embassy in London today on suspicion of representing the recently-banned extremist group Muslims Against Crusades.

Michael Berkeley’s Organ Concerto had its premiere in Ely 24 years ago, but it’s only now had its London premiere.

The surprises came thick and fast - but variants on a theme of Lady Gaga in the style of Bach was not one we might have anticipated.

Graham Fitkin is one of our most versatile composers, and since he’s been commissioned to celebrate the Olympics, the Cello Concerto he has written to showcase the talents of Yo-Yo Ma - plus the (dubious) acoustic possibilities of the Royal Albert Hall – is of more than passing interest.

Bruckner and Mahler may attract the same kind of crowd, but as characters they have nothing in common. While Mahler was a worldly neurotic with an over-developed messiah-complex, Bruckner was a tormented and obsessive social simpleton. Yet when Mahler’s sixth symphony and Bruckner’s eighth are given a Proms airing just four days apart, comparisons rise unbidden to the mind, and not only because, by a strange coincidence, they both last exactly 85 minutes.

Mahler toyed with naming his sixth symphony ‘Tragic’, and his widow Alma claimed he regarded the final movement, with its three notorious hammer-blows, as depicting ‘the hero, on whom fall three blows of fate, the last of which fells him like a tree’.