Something funny has happened on the way to the squash court in the past couple of decades. For reasons difficult to divine, the game somehow slipped off the mainstream sporting radar.

Rebecca Adlington

This, the first British swimmer to win two Olympic gold medals in 100 years, is the ever-smiling face of the athletes who will, we're confident, make us all proud at London 2012.

I went off Donna Leon several books ago – not enough plot, too much pasta, too much family stuff, above all, an excess of the tiresomely perfect Signorina Elettra, paragon of the Venetian cop-shop. But this is a return to form. Commissario Brunetti exerts himself with a lot more policing, plus the book is written with that depth of thought about crime and humanity that characterises the best of Leon's work.

With cathedrals to the carnivorous urge opening all around, does Meat People make the cut?

Inspired by a surge in interest in taxidermy, Genevieve Roberts learns to stuff a mouse called Derek... to wear as a brooch

Samuel Muston discovers why we should think twice before we throw away those peelings.

Will City workers lap up the classic French cuisine at Morgan M's new Smithfields asset?

Sturdy stews have helped us through the worst of the winter, but now it's time to leaven the load with a celebration of vegetable dishes, says Bill Granger.

Meat and cheese top the list of foodstuffs that have a negative impact on the environment, according to research

As a barrister, I seek justice for people and defend their rights. As a vegetarian, I like to think that I take a stand against injustice for those who happen not to have been born human and so are confined and killed for their flesh.

In a small town "somewhere between Brussels and Bruges" a trapeze artist disguised as a laundry worker has been murdered. So opens Hattie Naylor's new musical, The French Detective and the Blue Dog, at Theatre Royal Bath's children's theatre, the egg. But this is a production that could have done with a bit longer in the incubator.

Use these hints to give your parsnips some zip and turn even die-hard Brussels haters into fans, says Alice-Azania Jarvis

These days vampires are a high-profile lot, but Matt Haig's family of blood-suckers try to remain below the radar at all times.