Cultural Capital

At a very jolly ceremony at the Coach and Horses in Soho last night, Adam Mars-Jones won the inaugural Hatchet Job of the Year Award, organised by the review aggregating website The Omnivore. The prize, which rewards the "author of the angriest, funniest, most trenchant book review of the past twelve months", was judged by the journalists Suzi Feay, Rachel Johnson, Sam Leith and D ... read more

Aside from nostalgia, the primary responses to the generally encouraging quality of the new Muppets picture have been surprise and relief. But why?No other series with the exception of the Carry On films has maintained a comparably high standard over such a long period of time.

There may have been a slight falling-off in the late 1990s with Muppets from Space, and I can't vouch for the occasional TV films (such ... read more

Today, it is 200 years since Charles John Huffam Dickens was born in Landport, Portsea to John and Elizabeth Dickens. The second of their eight children, Charles would go on to become not merely a novelist but the paradigmatic Victorian man of letters - journalist, essayist and prolific correspondent as well as novelistof his day.

As Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, author of Becoming Dickens, noted in an essay ... read more

In the Telegraph, Catherine Taylor notes the historically and geographically specific settings of the stories in Jon McGregor's debut collection: "[They are set] mostly around the sparsely populated flatlands of eastern England ... like all his work, precisely of [their] place and time". Taylor admires the specificities of character and situation: ... read more

Whitechapel Gallery, London E1, Zarina Bhimji, until 9 MarchLandscapes and buildings and their multi-faceted histories inform British artist Zarina Bhimji's photographs and large-scale film installations. India and East Africa are the key locations for her evocative journey into the archaeology of place. This exhibition surveys 25 years of Bhimji's work, and is organised in collaboration with Kunstmuseum Bern.

Slug ... read more

The Books Essay in this week's New Statesman is by the novelist William Trevor, who pays tribute to V S Pritchett's mastery of the short story form. Pritchett, Trevor writes, "indelibly left his mark on it". He praises Pritchett's "exploration of the human condition", noting that "the unusual as a human quality appealed to him, as mild eccentricity did".

In Books, Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, author of Becoming ... read more

Adapt or die, goes the old saying. But in the case of Birdsong maybe it's adapt and die. I've now sat through versions made for the stage (Comedy Theatre) and made for TV (BBC One). In my head this was a Day of Judgement, a Sky Sports Super Sunday. Which one of the two great loves of my life (theatre and telly) would fare the best, or die the least? ... read more

Leonardo da Vinci's art provokes rapture. His paintings from his time in Milan, currently on show at the National Gallery, are sublime. The exhibition closes next week, so if you have not yet seen it, despite the crowds, queue for a ticket. If you don't, you will miss a truly exquisite and cathartic experience. The exhibition leaves you in no doubt of his absolute genius. ... read more

To call Bombay Beach a documentary is only half the story; it's what adorns and nourishes that framework that makes it so beautiful and distinctive. The Israeli filmmaker Alma Har'el spent a year living among the residents of Bombay Beach, a failed and forgotten development (now a "census designated place") on the Salton Sea in Southern California. What began as a "miracle in the desert" ... read more

In the Financial Times, Peter Aspden is initially sparing in his praise, noting that, although Dyer's celebration of Andrei Tarkovsky's fim Stalker is patient and straightforward, "it surely deserves more". Yet that expectation, too, is ultimately fulfilled, says Aspden: "[T]here is deft method in Dyer's fluent playfulness," he concedes, with "each scene in the film . . . scrupulously examined". Aspden is ... read more

When a play starts with the act of auto-fellatio, performed by a puppet, you know you're not in Kansas any more. Simon Stephens's The Trial of Ubu, at the Hampstead Theatre, begins with a quick-draw, crude in all ways, précis of Alfred Jarry's 1896 play Ubu Roi. Many of us have a beef with our physics teachers, but as far as I'm aware, Jarry is ... read more