Conservative Party donor's Caribbean operations lose $13.6m in final quarter of 2011

The View From Here

Lytton Strachey's Eminent Victorians announced that Gordon of Khartoum was not that eminent after all. Nearly a century later, Gillian Slovo's novel confirms the General's membership of the Great British Walking Disaster Brigade. As with her co-authored play Guantánamo and Ice Road, her novel about the siege of Leningrad, An Honourable Man is a fiction populated by real people caught up in historical events. Again we are in a siege, this time of Khartoum in the Sudan, threatened by the Dervish followers of the Mahdi, a mad, mystical leader.

Tens of thousands of rail passengers suffered travel chaos today after another cable theft, and a cracked rail, led to huge disruption on some of the country's busiest routes.

Christmas books of the year

Tom Cruise delighted fans who had waited for him in blistering cold last night as he arrived at the London premiere of Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol.

It is a big day today for Lord Ashcroft, the former bankroller of the Conservative Party, and others who have campaigned to have a £300m airport built on a remote Atlantic island, paid for by the British taxpayer.

Mainly remembered today in Victorian street and pub names, the Crimea was "the earliest example of a truly modern war" though conducted by "old codes of chivalry".

Of all The Kinks' hits, Waterloo Sunset is the one that still casts a spell. Ray Davies tells the band's biographer, Nick Hasted, how he came to write a genuine anthem

After another school year marred by teen pregnancy, drug dealing and murder, Waterloo Road has failed its final inspection.

The week in culture

After an irresistible rise, Michele Bachmann appears to be experiencing a collision with political reality after the opening 48 hours of her campaign for the Republican presidential nomination were overshadowed by a minor gaffe, a potentially major scandal and a small, but worrisome, dip in her popularity.

The restoration of Sir Richard Burton’s tomb may be a relatively small event – but it’s a very important one, says Jay Merrick

Buy suits for £325 (usual price £750) with free embroidered name or initials