The one that got away…
Simon Rattle's move to Berlin is a wake-up call for London, says Nicholas Kenyon.
No job for a woman?
Julie Wheelwright on the forces that kept women out of the forces in Men, Women and War: Do Women Belong in the Front Line? by Martin van Creveld and War and Gender: How Gender Shapes the War System by Joshua S Goldstein
Life on planet Earth
Life on planet Earth is precious - can somebody please tell the lunatics running the asylum.
Age of the blackwash
Biographers used to look for nice things to say about their subjects. Now, in the age of the blackwash, they dig for dirt.
Just good friends?
Was there something sinister about Lewis Carroll's fixation with seven-year-old Alice Liddell? Not necessarily, says Katie Roiphe.
Christie was film pioneer
A British Museum curator has discovered a reel of film shot by Agatha Christie that inspired the author to write some of her most famous detective novels, including Death on the Nile.
The Colossus diminished
Elaine Feinstein tiptoes through Ted Hughes's turbulent life and hints at the harsh truths only in brackets
‘This is an exciting time for potters – they should push back the boundaries’
Your reactions to last week's article about pottery
An exhibition of yourself
What's the difference between performance art and making a fool of yourself in public? Continuing our series on 'difficult' art forms, Libby Brooks trails a man wearing a stocking on his head - and ends up facing the bomb squad
Between McWorld and Jihad
Was anti-corporatism another casualty of September 11? Naomi Klein argues that the movement has never been more vital.
Sins and omissions
The Victorians loved seeing naked flesh, provided it was graceful, unthreatening - and didn't show those bits. Sarah Wise reports
A good death
Diane Pretty is dying from motor neurone disease, an incurable illness which has paralysed her but leaves her mind clear. This month the high court refused to allow her to commit assisted suicide. AC Grayling, who helped her barristers with ethical and human rights aspects of her case, explains why the judges are wrong
The hack’s progress
Roy Greenslade reads Anne Robinson's points of view in Memoirs of an Unfit Mother and finds a love story behind the career story
And me wi’ my bad leg
Angela McRobbie on the biggest yin of all, Billy Connolly, whose difficult journey to success is recounted in a spirit of healing by Pamela Stephenson
Macbeth: the soldier’s interpretation
One of my students is in the territorial army. I thought of it as a hobby - now it could mean I never see him again.