Rant

With his natural warmth and gentleness allied to a refreshingly non-dogmatic take on retro musical styles, M. Ward is one of the more engaging Americana artists around today.

Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh

John Burnside beats strong field to take T S Eliot award at third try with haunting collection 'Black Cat Bone'

It is rare indeed to find someone who has stumbled unburdened by preconceived ideas upon this Goliath of a poem. I used to believe that TS Eliot's 'The Waste Land', buried deep under a monstrous papier mâché pyramid of footnotes, dissertations, theories and essays, was well out of my reach.

A second poet withdraws from shortlist for £15,000 award over it's sponsorship by a hedge fund.

Alice Oswald is published by Faber & Faber, whose profits were boosted for years by royalties from Cats, Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical version of Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by TS Eliot. Eliot once worked at Lloyds Bank. Does Ms Oswald not feel sullied by the association with Lord Lloyd-Webber? Or by the evidence of Eliot's Mammon-worship?

The Monday Interview: The capital's greatest chronicler tells Andy McSmith why upsurges of violence are part of the city's texture

You might say that modern English fiction begins on a beach, and with a mystery – or a menace. In 1719, Daniel Defoe has his marooned Robinson Crusoe, who thought himself so alone on that archetypal desert island, one day find himself "exceedingly surprised by the print of a naked man's foot on the shore, which was very plain to be seen in the sand. I stood like one thunderstruck, or as if I had seen an apparition." At least Crusoe's future companion Friday (for the footprint is his) didn't nick the sun-lounger or swipe that silly cocktail with a paper parasol.

Dominic West, star of hit US drama The Wire, will take on the iconic title role of the rapier-tongued lecturer in a major new revival of Simon Gray’s Butley.

Dominic West, star of hit US drama The Wire, takes on the iconic title role of the rapier-tongued lecturer in a major revival of Simon Gray’s play Butley, from 1 June to 27 August.

A lesser poet might appear self-conscious after the exceptional success of The Drowned Book, which in 2007 won both the Forward and TS Eliot Prizes. But the writing in Sean O'Brien's profound and thoughtful November is conspicuously applied. Despite its range and sophistication, every freighted lyric phrase earns its keep in a volume that addresses both personal bereavement and the collective loss of social values.