Trevor Nunn has realised a forty-year dream by at last directing Tom Stoppard’s first masterpiece Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, as the second production of his captivating season at the Theatre Royal Haymarket.

The Victorian era is not generally regarded as one that greatly contributed to the progress of British theatre – and now the architecture of the age has scuppered a modern production.

To recap, then. Adam Mars-Jones, twice named one of Granta's Best Young British Novelists, despite never having produced anything reaching even 200 pages, suddenly published, in 2008, Pilcrow. This was the story of John Cromer, a cheery, inquisitive lad of the 1950s growing up with Still's Disease, an arthritic condition which, mistreated, leaves him physically stilted and bed-bound. It was, at over 500 pages, indisputably a novel; more than that, it was the first part of a trilogy. Not quite a case of three buses coming all at once, but at least we had the schedule.

A hotel complex in Ukraine, belonging to Alexander and Evgeny Lebedev, the owners of The Independent and the London Evening Standard, has been raided by police in an apparent row over the preservation of playwright Anton Chekhov's nearby house.

Sir Tom Stoppard is to work with BBC television for the first time in more than 30 years, making a five-hour epic tale of the Great War which he hopes will revive the reputation of one of Britain's finest novelists of the early 20th century, Ford Madox Ford.

Reading and literature is in danger of being "swept away" by new technologies that are commanding more of children's time, the playwright Sir Tom Stoppard said yesterday.

How do you make torture entertaining? How do you stage terror, infanticide, brutalisation and extraordinary rendition in a way that leaves your audience uplifted and in the mood for a drinks party? That's the problem that faced the Human Rights Watch organisation at the weekend, as they staged their benefit night at London's Royal Court Theatre. Rather than relying, as they have in previous years, on the reportage of individuals (which can be a recipe for earnestness and gloom), the organisers commissioned several mini-dramas from famous playwrights and actors, under the umbrella title The Laws of War. I checked the programme: there were nine events – an hour and a half of gruelling statistics and savage political satire, before we could hit the free wine. "Enjoy," said the ticket-tearer. I scanned her face for signs of irony.