Speaking of her “dark side”, the 66-year-old said she couldn’t be further from the doting housewife Barbara Good

'New plays are vital to the future health of British theatre' they say

The BBC leads the nominations for this year's British Academy Television Craft Awards with five nominations for period drama Parade's End.

John Humphrys will today receive a prestigious broadcasting award following the Today programme interview in which his ruthless grilling of George Entwistle prompted the resignation of the BBC Director-General.

The theme of Jonathan Rendall's writing life was risk. He came to prominence in the late 1980s as a vital new voice covering that most literary of sports, boxing, and captured in urgent, seductive prose the risk to life and limb that assails a fighter every time he enters the ring. But the risk came closer to home too. Rendall wrote about playing the odds in a book called, ominously, Twelve Grand. The terms of the contract with his publisher were that he would take his advance – the titular £12,000 – and gamble it. It's one measure of how well the gambling paid that later in life he would joke about a sequel called Twelve Quid.

A ravishing Keira Knightley very nearly convinces in Joe Wright's wilfully odd – most scenes take place in a theatre – adaptation of Tolstoy's tragedy.

Readers of fiction, Howard Jacobson argued at a literary symposium recently, ought to be able to withstand the “expression of an ugly point of view”.

TV pick of the week

As J M Barrie's ghost story Mary Rose comes to the stage, Paul Taylor explores how his arrested development added to his powers

The Redgraves have rivals in the latest batch of offspring to follow their parents

Blimey, that was quick. Barely an hour after the announcement, Sir Fred Goodwin's Wikipedia entry was headed "Fred Goodwin". It looked so bare. Without that all-important Sir, Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh were just historical geezers not heroes. The contraction "Fred" in "Sir Fred" sounded cool; Fred Goodwin just sounds like a bloke down the bookie's.

Booker-Prize winning author Salman Rushdie cancelled plans to appear at an Indian literature festival today after protests from Muslim clerics and warnings that he could be targeted for assassination.