When Brodsky, in US exile from his native Russia, won the Nobel in 1987, he became the youngest literature laureate. But the Leningrad-born poet, critic, essayist and dissident, jailed young as a "social parasite" under Soviet law, had matured faster than most.

Her last album introduced the concept of Peyroux the full-blown auteur.

When John H Young published his Guide to the Manners, Etiquette and Deportment of the Most Refined Society in 1879, it became a bestseller in his native America.

Acclaimed writer Gillian Clarke has been awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry, Buckingham Palace announced today.

"Important" books can sometimes be a chore, so here is the author of a masterpiece with the pacing of a soap opera. The forgotten member of the Cecil Day-Lewis/WH Auden circle at Oxford in the 1920s, this dandyish vicar's son and disillusioned Marxist led a life packed with colour, incident and, by his own admission, lechery.

No enemy can murder Agatha Christie. From India to France, her mysteries sell by the million. As crime buffs gather in Harrogate to investigate her lasting appeal, Andrew Taylor presents his defence

It is slightly frightening seeing a show when you know you are going to take over a role. Actors are like magpies – they pick everything up that they think is clever. Of course, you want to reinvent a role and not repeat what the previous actor did. The fact I have taken over from Richard Griffiths twice – both in The Habit of Art and The History Boys – mystifies me because we are very different.

The secret of living to 100 and beyond is all in our genes, according to new research. But who really wants to survive into extreme old age – or for ever? Not me, insists John Walsh

'It doesn't feel like cinema is catering for me so mostly I get things out on DVD and watch them on my humongous television'

Reports of the death of film have been greatly exaggerated. It's not the movies we've gone off, just traditional movie-houses. In their place, finds Alice Jones, are screens at festivals, in fields, car parks and sheds, and themed nights at secret locations and in private clubs

Covent Garden's new 'Aida' is an orgy of mad make-up, bare breasts and swinging corpses...with not a pyramid in sight

At an inn in the Austrian Alps Hilda Mack waits for her husband. 40 years ago he went climbing without, it seems, declaring that he might be some time.

Empty skies and Cleggmania were bolts from the blue. What do they presage?

Guttenplan's star performance seals coveted trophy