The dark history of European witchcraft will be explored in an exhibition opening at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art next July.

"This song is about drinking... and disaster," frontman John Bramwell drily announces before launching into the astringent "To the Brink".

With the pioneering verbatim-based London Road at the National and the RSC's exuberant Matilda conquering the West End, the British musical has been showing signs of bold, fresh life in the past couple of years.

Following their Bach Motets, choral octet Voces8 branch further afield with A Choral Tapestry, programming devotional material from across the spectrum.

Jody and Simon Blake have spent the past couple of months showing off their twins, Reuben and Floren, to friends – and delighting in the looks of bemusement that greet them. Because while Reuben went back to school yesterday, his sister, Floren, will have to wait until 2017. The children were born five years apart, but technically they are twins because they were born from the same batch of embryos.

The Monday Interview: The capital's greatest chronicler tells Andy McSmith why upsurges of violence are part of the city's texture

There are elements of Nina Simone and Joan Armatrading in folk-jazz singer Krystle Warren's voice, and even Dusty at her dustiest, on the five tracks which here serve as a taster for two albums' worth of material intended for release over the next year.

It has given its name to a hue of white that epitomises saintly purity. Now one of the great mysteries of the lily flower has been solved by scientists who have worked out precisely how it manages to bloom so spectacularly from its tightly enclosed bud.

The final resting place of some of the greatest names in English literature has been given Grade I status. Daniel Defoe, who wrote Robinson Crusoe, and John Bunyan, author of Pilgrim's Progress, are among those buried at Bunhill Fields Cemetery in central London.

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