The pop music of the Eighties was bright, bouncy and shiny – and the biweekly magazine Smash Hits displayed the same qualities while providing the perfect handbook for teenagers throughout the British Isles and beyond to follow the latest bands and trends. A mainstay of the much-loved publication throughout the first half of the Eighties, the photographer Eric Watson shot many of its iconic covers, including those featuring Madonna, Madness and Morrissey, and helped define the "heroic" look of many of the acts from the period.

Martin Kemp is Emeritus Professor in the history of art at Trinity College Oxford. He so is: he has written extensively about Leonardo da Vinci. He is conceivably the world's top go-to guy for Leonardo studies. Certainly, his blog contains a warning to any passers-by who might want to waste his time by knocking at his North Oxford door to ask him about the dodgy Leonardos they've bought in Romford market recently.

Poly Styrene, the female punk musician whose band X-Ray Spex changed the direction of popular culture, has died from cancer at the age of 53.

Synthesizers and drum machines might have dominated the music of the early Eighties, but the bass guitar also became prominent at the start of the decade that taste forgot.

Two months after Charlie Haddon plunged to his death, his band's new album, released today, is set for large sales

My parents were ... loving, warm, sincere and passionate. My mum used to be a clothes designer and entrepreneur and my dad worked in the steel and engineering industry as a marketing director.

Pink's crazy acrobatics, Florence's fantastic performance and phenomenal appearances by Paul McCartney, Jay-Z and Spandau Ballet made this year's Isle of Wight festival one to remember...

They made it an affair to remember

In some small way, 2009 will belong to Spandau Ballet, in a similar way that 2006 belonged to Take That. No, the north London gadabouts haven't been catapulted back into the nation's collective heart, and they haven't come armed with a manbag full of festive number ones. But they came back. Successfully. Achieved some sort of redemption. And their comeback hit, "Once More", even sounded like The That!

With their concern for price and privacy, these modest homes are green too

Alternative rock band Muse was named the best act in the world at the Q awards in London on Monday, beating off competition from Kings of Leon, Arctic Monkeys, Coldplay and Oasis.

Robbie Williams puts on his first gig in three years, but that's nothing compared with the lucrative rebirth of Spandau Ballet – minus the kilts

Should Gordon Brown find himself feeling a little short of friends, he could do worse that call up Sloane Square's uber-socialite, Henry Conway.

In the drab Britain of 30 years ago, Spandau Ballet stuck out like a sore thumb and kick-started the 1980s with appearances at non-rock venues which were as much fashion shows as harbingers of the pop music of the future. Images and memories of being mobbed with the band in Edinburgh in 1982 flashed through my mind, as they do on the film montage which introduces their first gig in two decades. The audience tonight is at least 70 per cent female, though the merchandisers also cleverly target the thirtysomething couples with romper suits adorned with Spandau motifs. It's all a far cry from the heady days of the Blitz, the Soho venue where it all began for the group who put the style back into pop. Fittingly, they start with the synth-driven "To Cut A Long Story Short" and the irresistible walking bass line of "The Freeze", their first two singles, even if they don't revert to their kilt and frilly-shirt selves of 1980.