Cultural Capital

Published digitally and in full for the first time today, the diaries of Beatrice Webb, leading Fabian and social reformer -- as well as co-founder of the London School of Economics and New Statesman magazine -- offer a fascinating insight into British social life from the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries. Funded by the Webb Memorial Trust and part of the LSE Digital Library, Webbs ... read more

In the current New Statesman, John Gray acknowledges Alain de Botton's view that religion and atheism could enjoy a more positive dialogue, but says he ought to paint religion more as a broad, overarching institution than as a hinge for individual belief: "Where he could have dug deeper is the tangled relations between religion and belief. ... read more

Picture: The Artist

Actor: Jean Dujardin - The Artist

Actress: Meryl Streep - The Iron Lady

Director: Michel Hazanavicius - The Artist

Supporting actress: Octavia Spencer - The Help

Supporting actor: Christopher Plummer - Beginners

Animated film: Rango

Documentary: Senna

Outstanding British film: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Film not in the English language: The Skin I Live In

Outstanding debut: Tyrannosaur

Adapted screenplay: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - Bridget O'Connor and Peter Straughan

Original screenplay: The Artist - Michel Hazanavicius

Production design: Hugo ... read more

Record of the year: Adele, "Rolling In The Deep"

Album of the year: Adele, 21

Song of the year: Adele Adkins and Paul Epworth (song writer award), "Rolling In The Deep"

Best new artist: Bon Iver

Best pop solo performance: Adele, "Someone Like You"

Best rock album: Foo Fighters, Wasting Light

Best pop duo: Tony Bennett and Amy Winehouse, "Body and Soul"

Best pop vocal album: Adele, 21

Best rap album: Kanye West, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

Best ... read more

Whitney Houston was found dead yesterday in a room at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles. She was 48. For some years before her premature death, her life had been blighted by cocaine abuse.

It's as if, writes the New Yorker's Sasha Frere-Jones in perhaps the most thoughtful reaction to Houston's death so far, "we've watched Whitney Houston die in ... read more

Raven Row, London E1, Asier Mendizabal, until 12 February

Mendizabal represents the symbols through which cultures are represented. He is concerned particularly with alternative and sub-cultures, often defined by subservience to those metaphors. This multi-generic exhibition fuses graphics, photography and photomontage with abstract sculpture.

Comedy Store, London SW1, The Comedy Store Players, 12 FebruaryThe legendary comic improvs present their twice-weekly ... read more

Despite the general tenor and tension of such challenging times, it's not often these days that the arts seem to return to first principles, to questioning their own purpose and shaping of meaning, and the ways they operate within the world and its structures of power. And yet, in a climate of seemingly permanent cuts, it's often at that primary level - where we most profoundly shape and reflect the ... read more

In the Critics section of this week's New Statesman, our Critic at Large this week is Alastair Sooke, presenter on the BBC's The Culture Show, who discusses the new exhibition of Lucian Freud's work at the National Portrait Gallery. Though conceding that Freud's work can seem crude - "Not evervbody is enamoured with his approach - and you can understand why. Scrutinised with dead-eyed detachment, ... read more

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