Those jelly scallywags Bompas and Parr are off to one of three venues for Museums at Night - and you get to pick which one you want it to be.

You get to vote which destination you want the renowned photographer to turn his lens on for a very special event as part of Museums at Night 2012.

Turner Contemporary in Margate, Discovery Point in Dundee and The Polar Museum in Cambridge bid for an evening with one of the country's finest authors.

Plus: What is the best last line of a novel? Who discovered that clams are happy?How do artists make self-portraits? When we look in a mirror the image is laterally inverted and we do not see ourselves as others see us. So are we seeing a true image of the artist?Speaking as an artist, your question doesn't make much sense. An artist will have some kind of technical ability to be able to produce work, but the creative process also comprises their own taste, style and experience. A self-portrait would involve a combination of all these factors; but, most importantly, you'll find artists aren't interested in what others see, only what they themselves see. Many artists use two mirrors (one reflects into the other) and therefore can see themselves the right way round if they so wish.chickenellyThere is the practical problem of literally seeing oneself, but these days it is relatively simple to view a photo that shows you as others see you. Whether you are seeing a "true image of the artist"is an entirely different matter. You might just as well ask: "If two artists create a representation of a particular object, which is the 'true image?'"torinesiWhen you look in a mirror your left hand is on the left side of your reflection. When someone else stands facing you, your left hand is on the right side as they look at you. So when you look in a mirror the image is not laterally inverted, but when you are facing a person you laterally invert them by the action of turning around to face them. But perhaps one is saying that the image in the mirror is laterally inverted with respect to how someone would normally see you.ThermoStatWhat is the best last line of a novel? "They went quietly down into the roaring streets, inseparable and blessed; and as they passed along in sunshine and in shade, the noisy and the eager, and the arrogant and the froward and the vain, fretted, and chafed, and made their usual uproar."  Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit.David Amery, East LondonFor me it would be hard to surpass this, from Samuel Beckett's 1953 novel The Unnamable. It is succinct, poignant and filled with pathos, yet is an exhortation of the need for survival. It is a profound metaphor on human existence: "I don't know, I'll never know, in the silence you don't know, you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on."Brian Mendes, London SE23My all-time favourite is: "Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out", but it's from a short story by Arthur C Clarke, The Nine Billion Names of God.jno50Great and depressing last line: "But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother." George Orwell's 1984.Jbrag"It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan." Herman Melville's Moby-Dick.DoctorKieOne of my favourites is from Charles Bukowski's Post Office: "In the morning it was morning and I was still alive. Maybe I'll write a novel, I thought. And then I did."catrionalexy"Phew – what a day!" James Joyce's Ulysses [perhaps].bennetmarco Who discovered clams are happy?And why aren't cockles?It's an Americanism and the full saying is "happy as a clam at high tide". At low tide one goes gathering clams, but at high tide they are safe from being harvested. Cockles, on the other hand, are a British thing. In America the only cockles we talk about are the cockles of one's heart, and we really have no idea what those are. "Clam" is the American term for any edible bivalve mollusc thingy. (Sometimes we call them mussels).hepkittenI always thought clams were happy because they have such a big smile when their shells are closed.hamletsghostAny answers?I was amazed to hear that Worzel Gummidge will be starring in a film. Which other TV favourites are ripe for the Hollywood treatment? Jane Reynolds, ManchesterIn August 2010 I dropped a message in a bottle into the channel halfway between Plymouth and Roscoff. Where is it likely to be now? Richard Bates, PenzanceIs there a finite number of recipes? Joan Bakewell, London NW1• Post your questions and answers below or email nq@guardian.co.uk (please include name, address and phone number).ArtCharles Dickensguardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Not much is known about Her Majesty's musical tastes. Princes William and Harry have chosen the acts for her diamond jubilee concert. But what would she like to listen to?For someone who has probably attended more concerts than anyone else in the country, the Queen's musical tastes remain pretty obscure. Dogs and paintings are more her thing. She glumly attended the golden jubilee concert in her back garden at Buckingham Palace 10 years ago, and her heart may have sunk slightly at the prospect of seeing the same ageing stars – Sirs Cliff, Tom and Elton, not to mention Dame Shirley – yet again.Organisers of this year's diamond jubilee concert on 4 June say she did not make any suggestions for the lineup. That was left to Princes William and Harry, who are probably responsible for Jay-Z, Ed Sheeran, Jessie J and JLS. But she is apparently "entirely content and happy" with it – the royal equivalent of granny dozing off during Top of the Pops at Christmas.Left to herself, Her Maj would probably prefer songs from the shows of the 1940s and 50s, or perhaps one of the madrigals she learned to sing as a child. Or, better still, a cup of Horlicks in front of the television – but the very same concert will be on that evening. Here's a stab at her ideal playlist:We're Going Home from the 1940s show 1066 and All That: The only record she is ever known to have requested.Some Enchanted Evening from South Pacific: The last musical she attended with her father, George VI, the week before he died.Dancing Queen by Abba ... er, possibly not.This Land is Your Land by Woody Guthrie: Well, it was a hit in 1947.The National Anthem: She'll get that at least, though probably not the Sex Pistols' versionQueen's diamond jubileeThe QueenMonarchyStephen Batesguardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Robert Crumb and Will Eisner among 130 illustrators contributing to 1,344-page condensation of all western – and some oriental – literatureFrom The Epic of Gilgamesh to Infinite Jest via Dante, Dangerous Liaisons and Dubliners, the western canon is set to be turned into a 1,344-page, three-volume graphic novel.The ambitious project from New York press Seven Stories is being hailed as the "graphic publishing literary event of the year". Each of the 189 works of literature covered is being interpreted by a comics artist, with 130 illustrators contributing to the project including Robert Crumb, Will Eisner and Hunt Emerson. The first volume of The Graphic Canon – "From The Epic of Gilgamesh to Shakespeare to Dangerous Liaisons" – is out in April, to be followed by the second ("Kubla Khan to the Brontë Sisters to The Picture of Dorian Gray") in July and the third ("From Heart of Darkness to Hemingway to Infinite Jest") in October.Crumb covers James Boswell's London Journal, in an adaptation "filled with philosophical debate and lowbrow debauchery", as well as Sartre's Nausea, capturing the author's "existential dread", while Eisner interprets Don Quixote. There will be two graphic takes on Moby-Dick, one by Eisner Award-winning artist Bill Sienkiewicz, Emerson takes on Coleridge with an illustrated interpretation of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Dame Darcy turns the Alice books into a "16-page tour-de-force", as well as visualising Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian.Graphic adaptions of Lolita – "everyone said it couldn't be done!" said Seven Stories – Thus Spake Zarathustra and On the Origin of Species are also in the pipeline, as are Yeats's "The Second Coming" done as a magazine spread, a letter on reincarnation from Flaubert, Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Women and short stories by W Somerset Maugham, Flannery O'Connor and Saki, done manga-style. The Eastern canon also gets its due, said Seven Stories, with The Tale of Genji done in full-page illustrations "reminiscent of Aubrey Beardsley", three poems from China's golden age of literature, the Tibetan Book of the Dead and a Japanese Noh play covered, as well as Haruki Murakami's The Wind-up Bird Chronicle. Each adaptation receives a maximum of 16 pages of space, with a short introduction by editor Russ Kick.The idea came to Kick when he saw a graphic adaptation of Franz Kafka's The Trial "and it all came together", he told US books magazine Publishers Weekly. "I started thinking about the giant comprehensive literary anthologies done by WW Norton," he said. "We tried to hit all the great books so it is a good way to familiarise yourself with the literary canon."Kick "wasn't interested in a literal interpretation of the text into pictures" from contributors, so he "let them run with it", he said. "I didn't want Classics Illustrated comics. I want to see the artists' stamp on it."He hopes the volumes will appeal to "comics and graphic novel fans and people who love literature, although I know there's some resistance to turning literary works into comics," he said.Comics and graphic novelsPublishingRobert CrumbAlison Floodguardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

F Scott Fitzgerald novel in eight hours – play comes to London after sellout runs and ecstatic reviews around the worldAn eight-hour long play looks set to become one of the most talked-about theatrical events of the year when it comes to London's West End in June. Gatz sees a cast of 13 perform every word of F Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby – a premise that sounds indigestible on paper yet has performed around the world to sellout audiences and ecstatic reviews.The New York Times's chief theatre critic, Ben Brantley, described it as "the most remarkable achievement in theatre not only of this year but the decade"."We've always had an interest in creating shows that weren't meant for the theatre," said John Collins, director of New York-based theatre company Elevator Repair Service, who first had the idea for the Gatz in the late 90s. "We thought late-90s New York resembled late-20s New York – reckless exuberance and new wealth. But I also got interested in the problem of putting a novel on-stage and I didn't want to bring in a playwright to recraft it because the writing seemed perfect to me."Instead, Collins decided to set the play in a drab office, where the main character, Nick, finds a copy of The Great Gatsby and starts reading it out, his co-workers slowly turning into Fitzgerald's characters as he becomes increasingly wrapped up in the book's 49,000 words. Collins has read – or heard – the book over 150 times, while Scott Shepherd, who plays Nick, has committed the entire thing to memory."There's always a bit more to discover in it," said Collins. "The perspective in the novel has been finessed so beautifully that I still find little literary and poetic gems peep out."Sarah Churchwell, professor of American literature at the University of East Anglia, who is writing a book called Careless People about the events that inspired The Great Gatsby, agrees."It is intensely lyrical and poetic, imagistic and synesthetic in its language, which means that even when the plot isn't carrying the story along, there is a richness and rhythm in the language that is immersive," she said. "Its fundamental subject - Gatsby's fatal error in accepting America's message that life's potential can be realised by chasing material success could not be more timely."Collins's company was "nervous" about the play's length – "before that we hadn't made anything longer than an hour and 15 minutes," he said – and experimented with performing it in two halves on consecutive nights, before realising that audiences were thinner on the second night. "What's rewarding is the totality of the experience," says Collins. "When we do it all in one night we lose nobody."In London, where it will play as part of the London International Festival of Theatre, Gatz will start at 2pm and finish at 10pm with a 90-minute break for dinner."The most commitment is in the first 30 minutes, because that's when we're asking people to slow down their clocks a little bit," said Collins. "Once they do that there's a huge reward in getting to the last chapter, which is where some of the most beautiful writing is."Though Gatz was initially blocked by the Fitzgerald estate – which, said Collins, had "an arrangement" with another production – it has now given the show its blessing. The delay, which initially prevented the show from being performed in London or New York, meant it gathered momentum as it travelled to other US cities and countries around the world, including Australia and Singapore."It backfired in a wonderful way. But we have a great relationship with [the Fitzgerald estate] now and we're proud to have their support," said Collins.This year will see a rash of adaptations of The Great Gatsby, with an "immersive" production opening in Wilton's Music Hall in London in April, and a musical following at the King's Head in August. Baz Luhrmann is also making a 3D film of the book starring Carey Mulligan and Leonardo DiCaprio."Filming Gatsby is an exercise in futility," said Churchwell. "Language can intimate, and leave multiple possibilities open. Film must choose one. Gatsby will either be gauche, or classy; Daisy will be charming, or repellant; Nick will be dishonest, or honest. And Baz Luhrmann isn't exactly known for his subtlety. 3D cocktails? I think not."Collins added: "He's known for his lavish productions, but I don't think period detail is what's great about the book."Though Gatz's production is far from opulent, some tickets are expensive even by West End standards. Prices start at £27.50, with "premiere seats" at £117.50. Yet even at this price, Collins said Gatz is value for money."Your normal West End price might only get you a show that's an hour and 20 minutes long. We're giving you eight hours, so if our tickets are less than four times that of a normal West End show, you could think of it as a bargain."West EndF Scott FitzgeraldTheatreAlex Needhamguardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Dickens's biographer says children don't read his novels anymore - can we prove her wrong?

Critically panned musical, which closed seven years ago after just one night in the West End, is to reopen on London's fringeWhen Mike Read's Oscar Wilde musical closed within hours of its opening night in the West End, five theatregoers suffered more than most: the people who had bought tickets to its second performance.Now, more than seven years later, they will finally have the chance to see the show one theatre critic dubbed "the worst musical in the world, ever". Despite its record as West End's shortest-lived show, the former radio DJ is to revive his second musical – the first being a Cliff Richard tribute entitled Cliff – at a London fringe venue.Oscar Wilde will get an eight-week run at the Above the Stag Theatre in Victoria starting next month. "There will doubtless be people who will say I am mad to be doing this, but I am not producing or directing it this time," Read told the Telegraph, "I was doing everything last time, including being the PR man, and I shouldn't have been. That was unwise."Read lost "a small fortune" – reported to be £80,000 – on the original production, and was twice declared bankrupt in 2009. On the second occasion, he was forced to sell his million-pound record collection.To lose one record collection may be regarded as misfortune; to lose a second would look like carelessness. Read is not taking any chances with the revival. He has revisited the script and score and the production has a new cast, but he remains confident that the musical can work and has blamed its poor reception on the Shaw Theatre, which he described as "more like a conference centre than a theatre".In 2009, he said, "That was one of the worst times of my life – an absolute nightmare. The Shaw Theatre was an unmitigated disaster. "It was hard to find and contact, and they didn't have a website. They were utterly ill-prepared and ruined our chances on press night."The critics might argue that wasn't really the problem. The Telegraph's Dominic Cavendish wrote, "It's hard not to feel anything but incredulous contempt," while, in the Guardian, Elizabeth Mahoney suggested that the musical's sound system might be "affected by the hefty rumbling of Oscar Wilde turning in his grave". The Times critic Benedict Nightingale offered some forgiveness: "As Oscar himself, Peter Blake is just about OK."Read subsequently defended the rhyming couplets which had come under critical fire: "Rhyming couplets did not do Shakespeare or Gilbert and Sullivan much harm."MusicalsOscar WildeTheatreFringe theatreWest EndMatt Truemanguardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Fancy showing off your impeccable taste in music? Share your playlists with usFrom next week we'll be changing the format of the Now Listening series – and we'd like your help.Each week we'll be inviting a reader to share with us a playlist of songs they've been listening to recently. We'd like a selection of between six and 10 tunes – ideally ones released in the last few weeks, but there'll be room for a few oldies as well – along with a line or two about each.If you'd be interested in contributing, email adam.boult@guardian.co.uk with the subject line "Now listening" and tell us who you are, and one or two tracks you'd include if you were to compile a playlist.To give you an idea of the kind of thing we're after, take a look at this week's Film&Music playlist – and let us know what you think below.Dougou Badie – Amadou & MariamListen on YouTubeComeback Kid – Sleigh BellsListen on YouTubeEverybody Knows – CultsListen on guardian.co.uk/musicWhite People – Natural ChildListen on YouTubeLove Interruption – Jack WhiteListen on guardian.co.uk/musicPop and rockIndieAdam Boultguardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Schiavo/Auser Musici/Ipata HyperionLuigi Cherubini (1760-1842) is often perceived as having a historical importance out of all proportion to the quality of his music. Italian born and trained, he settled Paris in 1788, where he made his name with a series of severely classical operas written in the aftermath of the French revolution and deemed masterpieces in their day. By 1805, his reputation was such that even Beethoven deferred to him. In later life, he ran the Paris Conservatoire: his pupils, finding him tyrannical, by and large hated him.Nowadays we know him through a handful of works, of which his 1797 opera Medea and the C minor Requiem of 1816 are the most familiar. Carlo Ipata and Auser Musici, however, together with soprano Maria Grazia Schiavo, have gone in search of rarities, not in order to give us a portrait of Cherubini at the height of his influence, but to examine how he got to the top in the first place. Their discoveries are fascinating.The unsmiling seriousness of purpose, so characteristic of his later work, was present as early as the overtures to Armida Abbandonata (1782) and Démophon (1788). What really surprises here, however, is that the lofty master of the severely sculpted phrase kicked off his career by writing coloratura showstoppers of fashionable difficulty for the divas of his day. Cherubini, when young, was, it would seem, more of an opportunist than we thought.The performances, however, are less than ideal. Schiavo's coloratura generates the thrill of an athlete leaping hurdles. But when she essays anything like a sustained line, you're aware of shallowness in the tone. Ipata conducts with dogged energy and determination, though Auser Musici's very lean sound is, at times, too uningratiating for comfort.Rating: 3/5Classical musicTim Ashleyguardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

The Design Museum's new exhibition shows us the past year in 89 designs, from a virtual supermarket to a super-lightweight wheelchairJustin McGuirk

Central Manchester University Hospitals NHS trust hosts first museums and galleries week within a hospital settingLucy Burscough is at her easel in the atrium of Manchester Royal eye hospital, completing a portrait of the hospital trust's chairman, Peter Mount. She's in the middle of painting the bottom part of his jaw, and one of his ears is still a pencil line. The resemblance is impressive.Patients waiting for appointments sit nearby, as you'd expect in a hospital, seemingly unflustered by the presence of an artist. Around the corner, a group of people are knitting in a circle by the main hospital entrance. Needles clack with spools of brightly coloured wool as the knitters talk quietly.Culture Shots is a week-long series of events at Central Manchester University Hospitals NHS trust, aimed at promoting health and wellbeing through exposure to art and culture.It is the first time in the UK that a trust has hosted a museums and galleries week within a hospital setting. A series of lectures, workshops and performances are taking place in conjunction with institutions including Whitworth art gallery, Manchester art gallery, Manchester Museum and Salford museum and art gallery.Burscough, the artist in residence at Galaxy House, a residential psychiatric unit for young people, is interested in how society views mental health. "Everybody has preconceptions about mental health and it would be good if we could bust a few myths," she says.She has a diptych in which one painting has pieces missing and the fragments reappear in the second. "A friend of mine's mother has bipolar disorder and she says when she's on drugs to keep the condition in check, she feels like pieces of her are missing as its part of her personality," she says.When she works with young people, she says, it is interesting to see how their self-esteem is improved by having their portrait painted. The portraits cannot identify the patients, so instead of faces she focuses on hands or an eye and nose"I felt they were quite brave having their portraits done," she says. Every one of them were invited to their own private view but none of them felt they could come as they had moved on with their lives when they left hospital. But I hope one day that they'll be able to revisit the portraits." Each has been given their own printed copy of her work.Burscough adds: "Yesterday I was in an ante-natal clinic and I had a lot of people coming in asking for portraits of their babies. The staff have been interested, too. It's something a bit different."On Monday, the Manchester Royal Infirmary atrium hosted a live performance based on the story of the suffragette and councillor Hannah Mitchell, which was well-received by staff and visitors.The eye hospital has a series of brightly coloured glass sculptures on permanent display, with a sign by the entrance imploring people to "please touch" the tactile art. Other sculptures are dotted around the modern building: a metal fish appears from a cabinet, and there's a flutter of butterflies across a wall.During 70 sessions over the week, the positive contribution to health of spending time in museums and galleries will be promoted.At St Mary's hospital atrium, in a portable obscure darkroom (Pod), Harriet Hall from Interference Art is encouraging people to empty their pockets or handbags and take photographs of objects, which they develop themselves and take away."It's something that goes against the instantness of cameraphones and goes back to traditional methods," she says. "A lot of the doctors have been laughing, saying we look like we're a decontamination tent, and here we are in our lab coats, which is very doctor-esque."Heavily pregnant women in pyjamas and dressing gowns walk past and stop to inquire what the Pod is about. "It is about giving people something unexpected," Hall says.Wendy Gallagher, arts and health programme manager at the Whitworth gallery and Manchester Museum, says the relationship with the trust developed over three and a half years. "There are 10,000 staff who work at the hospital sites and it is an opportunity for them to access creative arts, which have benefits for health and wellbeing, as well as the patients," she says.The arts institutions and hospitals have worked on a dementia reminiscence project. Art as therapy is recognised as being beneficial to health and, as Gallagher points out, "it's not rocket science. If there's an activity taking place during a person's stay in hospital it can reduce the need for analgesia."She says: "During the royal wedding patients who were usually given analgesia two-hourly had an eight-hour interval as they had something to distract them." And it wasn't because the staff were busy watching the nuptials.A parent whose daughter, Beth, was one of those whose portrait was painted during her stay at Galaxy House, praised the scheme for bringing children's mental health into the public eye. "It is definitely something that, as a parent, I feel is pushed under the carpet and hidden away. We are living proof, so are all the other children, that it can happen to any family at any time and I really do thank you for recognising that they are beautiful children behind the illnesses."NHSHealthManchesterHelen Carterguardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

They were hailed as a glossy new addition to the reality genre. But is the appeal of one-joke, one-note shows such as Towie and Desperate Scousewives fading already?The reem is over. The fake tan is fading and the vajazzles have lost their lustre. The only way is down for The Only Way Is Essex – with ratings for the latest series slipping. Last week the fourth series kicked off more than half a million viewers down on the third season – the first episode attracting 1.34 million compared with 1.89 million last autumn. So is this the beginning of the end for the scripted reality trend? Has the bright orange bubble burst before it ever fully inflated?Towie is the daddy of the home-grown scripted reality genre, taking its template from US hits The Hills and Jersey Shore. The rash of copycats that its Bafta-winning success spawned will now be looking nervously over their shoulder-pads. If the market leader is losing its grip, what hope for the "dramality" me-toos?MTV's Geordie Shore returned for its second run last week and already seems to be barrel-scraping. It started as a hormone-addled hornfest but its revamped warehouse setting makes it more like low-budget porn than ever. There was classy talk of Chlamydia and "I wanna find some slags". Hot tub sex amid shrieks of "I don't want naw babies!" was a new low. Put it away, pets.Meanwhile, E4's deplorable Desperate Scousewives looks doomed to be a one-series, erm, wonder, with persistent rumours that it won't be recommissioned. To their eternal credit, viewers didn't warm to its wannabe WAGs and two-dimensional dullards. Few will worry if it doesn't return to screens for a second outing and Channel 4 say that "a decision hasn't been made yet".Why this limited shelf life for reality drama series? Many such programmes are a one-joke, one-note idea. In certain cases, the punning EPG-friendly title alone was probably the pitch. Kitsch appeal soon fades. "So bad it's good" tips all too easily into "so bad it's just bad". And perhaps ITV has always suspected that this was the case, deciding to milk the Towie cash cow while it could still moo and rushing out four series and two festive specials within 15 months. ITV declined to comment on the show under-performing.But these shows are also victims of their own success. For their first series, they're an amusing window into a different and rather ridiculous way of life. Once that series airs, though, the cast lose that sweet innocence, becoming a self-aware "brand". The Towie cast are now splayed across the tabloids, meaning viewers know every grisly detail of their lives – and therefore how set-up the soapy storylines are.Neither does it help that every time the Brentwood posse produces a breakout star, he or she immediately gets diamante pound signs in their eyes and moves on to seek their fortunes elsewhere. Towie has already seen its major names swap the Sugar Hut for Chinawhite in a bid for mainstream fame. Amy Childs left in series two to be groomed as, shudder, "the new Katie Price". Series three saw Mark Wright and Kirk Norcross follow suit. Maria Fowler and Harry Derbidge have also since said "bye babes".Perhaps surprisingly, E4's Made In Chelsea might be the franchise that survives best. It has much lower viewing figures than Towie, but they appear to be holding up. It's back for a third series this spring and boasts more rounded characters, a cleverly-curated soundtrack, whizzy camerawork and aspirational tone. MiC panders cunningly to our love-to-hate-them fascination with rilly rah rich kids. Indeed, it's being exported to the States to cash in on the so-called "Kate Middleton effect".The stars of scripted reality shows are unlikely to disappear back into obscurity just yet. Their rent-a-faces are performing a valuable service, filling gossip pages until the next wave of micro-celebs comes along. They've started making a career, if you can call it that, out of appearing in other reality shows: Mark Wright entered the I'm A Celeb jungle and Kirk Norcross the Celebrity Big Brother house. Childs and Derbridge will pop up in Let's Dance For Sport Relief later this month.I can't say I'll be sorry to see the genre wither and die. I prefer proper drama or true reality to this cynical fusion of the two. But should I just "shut aarp"? And has it truly passed its sell-by date or is this just a temporary blip in its trashy trajectory? The only way is, well, the comments box below…The Only Way is EssexReality TVTelevisionITVTelevision industryMichael Hoganguardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Quakers, a side project comprising more than 35 members, will feature contributions by Dead Prez, Prince Po and Aloe BlaccPortishead's Geoff Barrow is to premiere his sprawling hip-hop side project this spring. Quakers, comprising more than 35 members, will release a debut album in March or April on Stones Throw Records, featuring work by rappers Dead Prez, Prince Po and Aloe Blacc.Quakers reportedly centres on a trio of producers: 7STU7, aka Portishead studio engineer Stuart Matthews, the Australian DJ Katalyst, and a knob-twiddler known for these purposes as Fuzzface, but who is actually Barrow himself. For the group's first record, these three have created 41 tracks featuring verses by MCs including Phar Kat, Pharcyde's Booty Brown and Smif-N-Wessun rapper Steele.Katalyst first described the album to Australia's Triple J radio in 2008. "Basically the concept is anyone can download the beats off MySpace, do their raps, send them back to us and if we like it we're going to put it on the record," he said. Even today, there are a handful of grim hip-hop loops at Quakers' MySpace, giving a taste of the album to come. "[It's] a pretty dirty, heavy, kind of lo-fi hip-hop record," Katalyst said in October.Elsewhere, Barrow will soon release a second album with his experimental rock band, BEAK>. He is also set to debut music by Drokk, his collaboration with composer Ben Salisbury. Samples of both are available on Invada Records' free 2012 compilation. Finally, Portishead have reportedly returned to the studio, recording the follow-up to 2008's acclaimed comeback album Third.Hip-hopRapPortisheadUrban musicSean Michaelsguardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

What the comedian said outside the high court after settling with News of the World publisher News International• Phone hacking: Steve Coogan and Simon Hughes settle claimsI am pleased that after two years of argument and denials, News International has finally agreed to settle my case against it for hacking my voicemails. It has been a very stressful and time-consuming experience for me and for those close to me.This has never been about money. Like other people who have sued I was determined to do my part to show the depths to which the press can sink in pursuit of private information.The police and the Leveson inquiry will be investigating these matters, but at the time when these civil cases began News International seemed likely to succeed in covering up the hacking scandal completely. Neither the police nor the government were willing to hold those responsible accountable for unlawful acts.For a long time it was left to victims of these egregious practices to fight for the truth. The victims included not only people like me, who are well known and in the public eye, but also many ordinary members of the public, sometimes vulnerable people with the most tenuous connection to the news. I am full of admiration for their bravery and persistence.The Leveson inquiry is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get to the truth and to make sure this kind of abuse is not inflicted on others in the future. However the public needs to be on its guard to ensure that the press does not escape the consequences of its misdeeds, as it has done many times before. It would be very wrong if it were ever again left to private citizens to take on the might of the newspaper industry to address wrongs on such a scale.Phone hackingSteve CooganNewspapers & magazinesNational newspapersNewspapersPress intrusionNews of the WorldNews InternationalMedia lawguardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

The author's The Rings of Saturn starts as travelogue and ends in melancholy and horror – a new film, Patience (After Sebald) captures its mood admirablyI came late to WG Sebald, in the early summer of 2010, although I'd known of him for years. He was one of those surname-only authors whose works it seemed everyone else had read – or else he would crop up stuffily in the footnotes of a certain sort of book.So until I heard Will Self praising his work on the Today programme, he was simply a name on my to-do list. A task, you might say. Someone to read in hospital, if and when the time came.But something about Self's enthusiasm persuaded me to buy The Rings of Saturn that lunchtime. Billed as an account of several days spent walking the Suffolk coast – territory I have known and loved since childhood – it ought to make perfect reading for the journey home to East Anglia that evening. And sure enough, as my train clattered and swayed across the shrinking peatlands, I found myself asking where this reluctant German had been all my life.Over the next 24 hours I learned two things. The first was that many of the people I'd assumed had read Sebald actually hadn't. The second was that The Rings of Saturn isn't an account of a summer's hike down the Suffolk coast. Well, on the surface it is, which is probably why it's the Sebald book that newbies like me generally start with. But after the first few miles, it's pretty obvious that there's a great deal else going on besides the gorse and the deadbeat fishing towns. And that something is, to put it very mildly, man's grotesque inhumanity to man.A lot of people toss the book aside then. If it's a novel, where's the plot? If it's a travelogue, what's the point? And that's something else I learned that summer, as I urged all and sundry to read it, even buying copies for the faint-hearted: like Michael Gove and his wretched Bibles for schools, most people don't like this stuff.Those who do, of course, love Sebald to bits, and his death in a car crash in 2001 (he was just 57, and already there had been talk of a Nobel prize for literature) quickly lent him a cult status. Quite naturally, enthusiasts feel the urge to don their walking boots and follow in his footsteps, as if he was some sort of lowland Wainwright who dropped dim, monochrome photos into his text instead of those hiker's-eye sketches of bracken and limestone walls.And that's so easily how the new film, Patience (After Sebald), might have turned out – a moodier version of the TV series Coast, with some lit-crit bod from the University of East Anglia standing in for Nicholas Crane, and wearing an academic jumper rather than a red anorak, but still bellowing over the screech of surf on shingle.Happily, though, director Grant Gee has made something still and beautiful – an art documentary in the very best sense – that seemed to me to evoke perfectly the melancholia of Sebald's book while hinting at the horror which lies at the heart of its labyrinth.Two summers ago, when I had finished The Rings of Saturn, I read Sebald's other books one after the other – ending with The Natural History of Destruction, a series of lectures in which he describes in terrible detail the firebombing of German cities during the second world war and the shroud of silent forgetfulness that enveloped his countrymen and blighted his Bavarian childhood.After that, I felt compelled to read about the Holocaust, since this was where his route seemed ultimately to lead. And for months afterwards I was at a loss to understand how anybody could write about any other subject ever again.And now, thanks to Grant Gee and Patience, I have taken The Rings of Saturn down from the shelf and begun once more that southerly trudge along the cliff's edge. It's a path that will never lead to happiness, but I am certain to be in the very best of company.• Patience (After Sebald) is out nowWG SebaldFilm adaptationsDavid Newnhamguardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

The Design Museum's new exhibition shows us the last year in 89 objects – and reveals many of our current preoccupations, from virtual grocery shopping to printers that produce glassWhen the BBC aired a radio programme last year called A History of the World in 100 Objects, it was a deserved hit. Such anthropological lists are useful story-telling devices. A similar, though more modest, project is underway at the

Subsidies cannot, and should not, save independent shops. Owners and publishers have to make them unique places to visitBookshop owners in Britain could be forgiven for casting envious glances across the Channel as they watch their French counterparts successfully fight government attempts to increase VAT on printed books. "Culture should be a political priority," the Socialist presidential candidate François Hollande has been quoted as saying, a view that has strong resonance in a country where discounting books beyond 5% is still forbidden and independent bookshops are supported by tax breaks.By contrast, independent booksellers in the UK feel only the cold air of commerce as they open their doors to the dwindling number of customers who still brave Britain's high streets and are prepared to pay full prices on books discounted to excess by Amazon and supermarket groups. The closest UK politicians – of whichever hue – come to supporting bookshops is when they flog their autobiographies through them. As a result many independent bookshops have simply closed their doors. There are perhaps just over 1,000 independents left in the UK; by contrast France boasts about 3,000.This has prompted some in the industry to call on the government to support independents in order to protect "the wellbeing of society". If that sound familiar, it is – the same argument is being made to save public libraries. Librarians may yet win their case, but it is hard to imagine politicians will rush to the support of a retail sector that still sells more than £1bn worth of books each year.Besides which, the picture from the bookshop floor is more complex. While there has been, without doubt, a decline in physical shops selling printed books over the last decade, this has come after 20 years of growth in shelf-space, as chains such as Waterstones and Borders overexpanded and supermarkets turned a lascivious eye to bestsellers.Roll-back 15 years, and it was this expansion that was killing indies, not the twin devils of digital and discount.Furthermore, the way readers buy and use book content is undergoing a revolution as digital reading grows. Over the next few years we are likely to see a rise in new booksellers such as Kobo, the Canadian ebookseller, and new ways of selling books, with social platforms such as Anobii and perhaps even Facebook becoming spaces where books are discovered, recommended, and sold.No amount of government subsidy will change this, or hold back the global giants such as Amazon, Apple and Google who are vying to become tomorrow's bookshops. And the problem with the French system is that it makes high-street bookselling appear uneconomic – fluffed up by artificially high book prices and state subsidies, with the attendant risk that bookshops will be left looking increasingly outmoded.Yes, independents are the life-blood of the book business – they can make and break authors and support fledgling publishers in ways non-stockholding retailers cannot. They help shape the nation's literary tastes and are the visible link between the reader and author. Without their tireless championing of new writing, literary diversity will shrink – yet aspic is simply not a good look for bookshops, and is unappealing for authors, who now have more ways than ever before to get their content to market.What independents really need from the government is a level playing field. Closing tax loopholes that allow Amazon to sell ebooks out of Luxembourg at a VAT rate of 3%, compared with the British VAT rate of 20% on ebooks, would be a start. Bringing forward the government's response to Mary Portas's high-street review would also help, particularly if rate relief was offered for smaller businesses, and the response helped usher in a planning environment that favoured local and individual retailing over out-of-town shopping centres.But even this won't be enough to preserve most indies if their businesses simply go out of fashion. The secret is to make sure this does not happen. Shelf space is now at premium – and bookshop display remains the best way of promoting writing and discovering new writers, even if it is later bought and consumed online.Publishers need to recognise this and put a value on it by paying up-front for display space, bringing out beautiful editions that are made available only in stores or showcasing new titles first in bookshops. Here we can look to the continent, where the French have an annual festival celebrating new books called the rentrée littéraire, which encourages book readers to head into shops and browse the new works.Bookshops also need to find a way of making money out of the way they intereact with customers so they make a return, even if the customer seals the deal elsewhere. Some have been experimenting with paid-for author readings, subscription-based reading clubs or, as in the case of London indie The School of Life, evening classes and paid-for "bibliotherapy". Bookshops also need to be where readers are going to discuss books, online. Too many still operate websites built in the last century.Talk of subsidies suggests the bookshop model is broken: that is moot, but it will never be fixed if the taxpayer has to pick up the tab.BooksellersAmazon.comE-commercePhilip Jonesguardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Andrew Pulver picks the top films showing at the 62nd Berlin film festival, including a head-to-head meeting of the directorial debut from Angelina Jolie and a new film from her ex-husband Billy Bob ThorntonAndrew Pulver

In his latest take on art history, Peter Duggan gives Jacques-Louis David's Oath of the Horatii a boyband makeover and breathes new life into The Death of Marat

From Cervantes to Samuel Beckett, the novelist picks out the writers who portray true friendship as an antagonistic businessLars Iyer is a lecturer in philosophy at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. He is the author of two books on Blanchot (Blanchot's Communism and Blanchot's Vigilance: Phenomenology, Literature, Ethics) and his blog Spurious. He has also written two novels, Spurious and, published by Melville House, Dogma.Buy Dogma at the Guardian bookshop"'In your friend you should possess your best enemy', Nietzsche writes. What a remarkable thing to say! This is a concept of friendship radically different from the smugly narcissistic friendship collectives of Facebook. Nietzsche's true friend is someone who challenges you deeply, who badgers, bothers, enrages, and insults you – an antagonist who is not content to leave you be. In the last few years, a bit of slang that describes this relationship has wormed its way into the Oxford English Dictionary: a frenemy."My novels, Spurious, Dogma, and the forthcoming Exodus, relate the adventures of two such frenemies, maverick philosophy lecturers W and Lars, who travel through Britain and overseas, bantering and bitching as they go. Of the two characters, it is W who is more obviously cruel, claiming that Lars is lazy, morbidly obese, and has a low IQ, as well as terrible sartorial sense. But Lars, it has been suggested, shows a special cruelty of his own, his frenmity apparent in the deadpan way he narrates the novels, allowing the wildly idealistic, failure-loving W to hoist himself by his own petard. For my part, I find their fren-ship a refreshing alterative to the bland support networks of 'kidults' locked in positive feedback loops of mutual reassurance. True friendships should contain an element of the cruel and cutting. The oddly refreshing antagonism of frenemies is something I look for in life, and in the literature I read."1. Cervantes' Don Quixote and Sancho PanzaTall, thin Don Quixote is full of deluded imaginings, believing himself to be a knight-errant riding out to restore the bygone values of the age of chivalry. His comic foil Sancho Panza is short, fat, and ignorant, who, although aware of Quixote's delusions, lets himself be caught up in his companion's pursuit of honour and glory, albeit because he thinks he might get some personal gain from their adventures. Theirs is a sunny kind of frenmity, with Sancho as the comic sidekick, an everyman realist to his master's idealist, spouting what have come to be called sanchismos, a humorous mixture of ironic Spanish proverbs and put-downs.2. Samuel Beckett's Vladmir and EstragonWaiting for Godot or, Frenemies: A Love Story. Two bowler-hatted old men wait by a leafless tree, much as they waited the day before, and as they will doubtless wait the next day, too. In Beckett's play, there's all the time in the world to occupy – time for old jokes and pratfalls, for bickering and recriminations, for nostalgia and wistfulness; anything "to hold the terrible silence at bay". Vladimir, the more philosophical of the two, tends to muse on abstract matters; Estragon, the more mundane, is more concerned with the whereabouts of his next meal. But they are united in the push and pull of their frenmity, as their waiting threatens to erode all hope.3. Thomas Bernhard's Glenn Gould and WertheimerIn The Loser, Bernhard presents his fictionalised Glenn Gould as the very embodiment of the great artist, which makes life very difficult, and, in the end, impossible, for Wertheimer, a fellow piano student at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. Wertheimer gives up his studies for good when he overhears Gould's terrifyingly great rendition of Bach's Goldberg Variations. But it is when Gould casually labels his friend a "loser" that Wertheimer is sent into a vortex of self-loathing, and, eventually, suicide.4. DH Lawrence's Gerald Crich and Rupert BirkingLawrence's Women in Love is also a novel about men in love, and, indeed, in love with one another. Rupert Birkin, the central male character, has an evangelical sense that he must reckon with "the problem of love and eternal conjunction between two men". His nude wrestling match with Gerald Crich, so memorably staged by Oliver Reed and Alan Bates in Ken Russell's film, is a homoerotic tableau of the frenemy, with both men struggling at once for and against one another.5. JG Ballard's James Ballard and Robert VaughanIn Crash, when James Ballard is hospitalised after a car accident, he finds himself drawn into the orbit of a sinister former scientist, Robert Vaughan, who is obsessed with re-staging the car crashes of celebrities. Vaughan frightens Ballard even as he fascinates him, and their increasingly uneasy friendship tips over into something macabre. When Vaughan takes his last death drive, Ballard writes his hagiography, paying an ambivalent tribute to this Lucifer of the motorway.6. Thomas Mann's Lodovico Settembrini and Leo NaphtaSet in a sanatorium in Davos, in the decade leading up to the first world war, The Magic Mountain features a microcosm of the pre-war European intelligentsia, including the frenemies Lodovico Settembrini and Leo Naphta, the former embodying the positive, hopeful ideal of the Enlightenment, and the latter, the more chaotic, order-threatening aspects of fascism, anarchism and communism. The two men debate furiously, and end up fighting an improbable duel, foreshadowing the coming clash of ideologies that would tear the continent apart.7. Gene Wolfe's Badlanders and Dr TalosGene Wolfe's epic science fiction series The Book of the New Sun has its share of mysteries. One of them is the strange friendship between Baldanders, the permanently exhausted giant who won't stop growing, and the wily, diminutive Dr Talos who beats, bullies and cajoles his larger companion. Initially, the seemingly slow-witted giant appears to be Talos's charge, but things turn out to be the other way around: Baldanders is actually a scientist allied with sinister alien forces, who built his frenemy Talos for obscurely masochistic purposes of his own.8. Patricia Highsmith's Bruno and GuyPatricia Highsmith is a master of the perverse friendship, and her first novel Strangers on a Train was no exception. Hitchcock's film version portrays Bruno as merrily murderous and Guy as morally upstanding, but the novel presents the two men intertwined in a twisted friendship that is more significant than any other in their lives. Guy may be disgusted by the drunken, vicious Bruno, but when Bruno falls overboard at sea, Guy instantly dives into the waves, unable to imagine life alone without his cruel friend.9. Saul Bellow's Charles Citrine and Von Humboldt FleisherIn Humboldt's Gift, Charles Citrine makes a fortune from writing a successful Broadway play, based on the life of his older friend, the poet Von Humboldt Fleisher. Big mistake! Although his manic depression, alcoholism and pill-popping mean that he's never delivered on his early talent, Humboldt still upholds the loftiest ambitions for art – ambitions, which, he claims, Citrine has utterly betrayed. Citrine's success means that the easy friendship this pair enjoyed has gone, with Humboldt wounding his now frenemy with accusations of sell-out and crass commercialism.10. Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Stoppard famously sets Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead in the interstices of Hamlet, elevating two supporting characters from Shakespeare's play into leads. His focus is on how the pair occupy themselves when they are offstage in the parent play, which appears to be by aimless banter and mock-philosophical arguments. But there's an existential twist: Stoppard's characters seem to be aware that they are unimportant fictional characters, each casting aspersions on the other's comparative degree of reality, each claiming that the other doesn't really exist. Such acts of frenmity grant them what little sense of reality they have in a world which seems, to them, to be absurd and out-of-control.FictionSamuel BeckettTom StoppardMiguel de CervantesSaul BellowDH LawrenceJG BallardLars Iyerguardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

The actor and producer is the latest to declare a creative interest in the story of three men convicted of child murders in 1994Johnny Depp looks set to become the latest high-profile film-maker to take a creative interest in the controversial case of convicted child killers the West Memphis Three after optioning a forthcoming memoir by one of their number, Damien Echols.Echols, who is now in his mid-30s, was convicted in 1993 alongside Jessie Misskelley Jr, and Jason Baldwin, of the murder of three eight-year-old boy scouts in West Memphis, Arkansas. Investigating police at the time labelled the killings part of a satanic ritual. He was freed last year after 18 years on death row under a controversial plea bargain which got the trio out of jail but denied them permission to sue the state authorities for wrongful imprisonment.There have so far been four documentaries made about the trio's plight, which attracted attention from celebrity supporters such as Metallica, Eddie Vedder, Henry Rollins and Depp himself. The Paradise Lost series of films, by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, were instrumental in helping free the three – the film-makers had originally planned to shoot a film about what they thought was a case of cult killings in a small rural community for HBO in 1996 and wound up uncovering evidence of faulty DNA evidence and police coercion.The first two instalments attracted attention when Metallica allowed Berlinger and Sinofsky permission to use their songs. All three of the convicted men had been fans of the rock band, and critics suggested it was their appearance and choice of lifestyle which contributed more to local suspicion than any hard evidence. The final film was screened last year as the trio were released from prison. A further, separately-commissioned documentary, the Peter Jackson-produced effort West of Memphis, screened recently at Sundance and has attracted critical acclaim.Depp's venture, which he will produce through his Infinitum Nihil company, also looks likely to be beaten to the big screen by a dramatic retelling from the Canadian film-maker Atom Egoyan, who said last year that he hoped to uncover the "human drama" behind the convictions. "It's a contemporary Salem witch-hunt," Egoyan said. "The screenplay beautifully examines the ebb and flow of grief, disbelief and anger that flowed through the community in the wake of this catastrophe. It's an amazing story of a community and the conflicting emotional needs of seeking and finding justice, but also the complexities of jumping to conclusions."Deadline says Depp's planned film will aim to spotlight Echols' controversial conviction and imprisonment, presenting his life prior to incarceration as well as the twists and turns which led to his release. The memoir itself will be published in September. It is not yet known if Depp will take an acting role in the film.Johnny DeppFilm adaptationsCrimeDocumentaryBen Childguardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

The head of fashion house Chanel, Karl Lagerfeld, has branded pop icon Adele "a little too fat".

LONDON (Reuters) - Prince Charles led global celebrations on Tuesday marking the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens, a titan of English literature whose vivid stories confronted the injustices of Victorian life. Britain's heir-to-the-throne visited the Charles Dickens Museum in London where U.S. actress Gillian Anderson, who played Miss Havisham in a BBC adaptation of "Great Expectations," read from the novelist's work. ...