Wednesday

James Bond has a new American publisher: Amazon.com.

In Modern Spies, Peter Taylor was at pains to make it clear to us that contemporary intelligence work isn’t a bit like film and television fictions would have us believe. This will presumably come as a relief to the parents of young people who find themselves intrigued by the increasingly open recruitment procedures of the UK’s intelligence and security services. One British intelligence officer here revealed that when she’d told hermother what her new job was, she’d replied, “Oh my goodness, you’re going to end up with your head in a fat-fryer!” her knowledge of MI5 having been largely gathered from watching Spooks. Her daughter assured Taylor that it isn’t really like that, just a little wistfully, I thought: “Unfortunately, I’m not running around the streets of London, chasing terrorists, being nearly blown up every week,” she said. Apparently, there’s a lot of paperwork. But, despite such testimony, Taylor had a problem with his project of de-glamourisation, which was the deep devotion of television to the visual rhetoric of the spy movie.

Two winners shared Wednesday's Lotto jackpot of £2.3 million, Camelot said.

One ticketholder has scooped the £4.5m Lotto jackpot, Camelot said.

Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Michael Caine

One ticketholder scooped the £4.4m jackpot in Saturday's National Lottery draw, Camelot said.

Bérénice Bejo has until now been restricted to minor mainstream roles and sidekick parts in French farces. But Oscar buzz is growing thanks,somewhat oddly, to a black-and-white throwback to Hollywood's silent era.

One lucky winner scooped Saturday's Lotto jackpot of £4.4 million, Camelot said.

Thirty-six-year-old Joshua Radin, in case you're bewildered by modern music's deluge of Joshes, is the singer-songwriter from Ohio who had a medium-sized hit last year with "I'd Rather Be With You".

One winner scooped Wednesday's Lotto jackpot of £2.4 million, Camelot said.

The skill of a great film composer is to marry moving images with sound in such a way that they seem organically linked. Yesterday the superlative John Barry united film and music one last time, as figures from both circles offered tributes to his career on the news of his death at 77.

John Barry was the composer whose scores were as famous as the films for which he wrote them.