My very own end of the peer show
James Rayment explains how he came to take Jeffrey Archer's Prison Diary to Edinburgh this year - with a little help from the man himself
Sounds and silence
A rebel against authority since childhood, Peter Maxwell Davies won a scholarship to study music in Manchester where he joined a remarkable group. Influenced by plainsong and European modernism, he composed a string of provocative works before founding a festival in the Orkneys. This year he became Master of the Queen's Music, and his 70th birthday will be marked at the Proms.
The rebel, the lady, and the resurrection
Strange tale of how prayer to a late bishop raised dead man is found in Vatican.
Author takes swipe at scientific elite
Researchers forget that making errors is path to knowledge.
Fear of ‘toxins’ leads to brain drain
Bad press turns UK into nation of chemiphobes.
It was 37 years ago today – and Sgt Pepper cover has still failed to pay
He may have produced the most famous album cover of all time. But, for Sir Peter Blake RA, ubiquity is not its own reward. Thirty-seven years after he and his then wife created the cover of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the fact that they were paid a piddling £200 still hurts.
Bohemian culture ‘is now the norm’
Author at Hay Festival claims pioneers of alternative lifestyle gave modern world more than literature and hedonism.
Why we must thank the Turks, not Drake, for defeating the Armada
For four centuries, Sir Francis Drake has symbolised English nonchalance and cunning in the face of danger. But yesterday, it was claimed that Elizabeth's protestant throne was saved by a less celebrated ally: the Turkish navy.
UK novel saved by ethnic minorities
American author John Updike last night earned the gratitude of British writers when he assured them that they no longer have an awe-stricken inferiority complex about US novelists.
How to recapture cities’ civic pride
Historian throws down gauntlet on need for regional centres to regain their heritage.
Lost Plots gains a prize
Jasper Fforde, a film technician turned writer, won the Wodehouse prize for comic fiction - plus a live pig, which is at present living unsuspectingly in a field in Powys.
Cast into darkness
Frequently lauded as one of the best British films ever made,
Performance is being released again. Michael Holden explores
some of the myths surrounding the troubled cult movie
Death becomes her
Laura Barton: Sylvia Plath is a raw wound for many women - one they keep on scratching.
The joy of sadness
Dürer's Melencolia I is about more than insomnia and depression. Its themes of geometry, cosmology and even politics have influenced artists from Grass to Birtwistle. By Patrick Wright