Between the Covers 20/05/2012

Sat, 19 May 2012 23:00:56 GMT

We love flavorwire.com's new collection of "extremely silly photos of extremely serious writers", which shows that even Nobel Prize-winners kick back and let their hair down from time to time.

The End, By Ian Kershaw Incognito, By David Eagleman Beirut, Ed. Samuel Shimon Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, By Paul Torday The Chicken Chronicles, By Alice Walker

Sat, 19 May 2012 23:00:21 GMT

The End, By Ian Kershaw

Penguin £9.99

*****

The Forrests, By Emily Perkins

Sat, 19 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Emily Perkins' new novel opens with the making of a home movie and retains the feel of one, full of fragmentary impressions; momentary visual clarity mixed with the jumpy blurrings induced by a handheld camera. The extended opening shot is a swirl of activity, and captures siblings Dorothy, Michael, Eve, Ruth and their new friend Daniel messing about in the garden, then charging into the house for an impromptu game of Scrabble and witnessing their cat give birth in a sweater drawer.

Agenda: Hand-printed Bauhaus tights; Queen of Hearts; Cinemagram;

Sat, 19 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Fashion: Be haus proud

Bring Up the Bodies, By Hilary Mantel

Sat, 19 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Anne Boleyn's story is not an unfamiliar one, but it continues to tempt chroniclers because of its uncertain outline. Details, such as the idea that the queen had six fingers, were often added later by historians with an axe to grind or a patron to please. Many of the agents of the queen's downfall had, we must assume, good reason to destroy any evidence of their involvement. Mostly, what we know for certain is how terribly swiftly her fall occurred – perhaps between 20 April and 19 May 1536, when she was executed by a French swordsman who died with her.

Slumdog the musical calls in Julian Fellowes

Sat, 19 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

It was an old-fashioned Hollywood fairy tale: the low-budget movie, with a feel-good plotline and a virtually unknown cast, that managed to capture the public imagination before walking away with no fewer than eight Oscars at the Academy Awards in Los Angeles.

What the Butler Saw, Vaudeville Theatre, London The Sunshine Boys, Savoy Theatre, London Detroit, NT Cottesloe, London

Sat, 19 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Vintage comedies are all the rage. The West End can't get enough of them since One Man, Two Guvnors (an 18th-century classic that was rejigged as a Sixties seaside caper) proved a roaring, award-winning success, alongside Noises Off and The Ladykillers. Are theatreland's latest additions to this retro craze going to raise the roof, though?

'Sluttish stars harm youngsters,' says Mike Stock

Sat, 19 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Mike Stock, one third of arguably the most successful songwriting trio of all time, has branded the likes of Lady Gaga and other female pop performers as "sluttish" in a scathing attack on the sexualisation of pop music.

The curious world of Norton Juster

Sat, 19 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Some people are very easy to interview. Norton Juster is not one of them. He's delightful and articulate, but listening to the recording of our time together, it's striking how much more interesting his answers are than my questions. So our conversation entirely failed to resolve classics such as "Where did the idea for your book come from?" and ended up instead about vocational education, bipolar disorder, obscure Edwardian ghost-story writers, C P Snow, synaesthesia and the walks Juster used to take with his older brother. In some respects, it's hardly surprising; Juster has been giving interviews about his children's classic The Phantom Tollbooth for half a century, so might be forgiven for wanting his conversations to roam elsewhere.

The Blagger's Guide To: Michael Frayn

Sat, 19 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Michael Frayn's latest novel, Skios, will be launched on Thursday. It will be his eleventh novel. He has also written or translated 31 plays, and published 12 works of non-fiction, including a collection of his journalism, Travels With a Typewriter (2009) and a biography of his father, My Father's Fortune: A Life in 2010.

Rambert, Sadler's Wells, London François Testory, Robin Howard Dance Theatre, The Place, London

Sat, 19 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Next year Rambert really will have something to celebrate, when it moves to gleaming new premises on London's South Bank. But for the moment it has the 100th birthday of the world's first piece of modern dance to toast, and 10 years of able leadership from Mark Baldwin, who offers his own choreographic answer to Nijinsky's strange, feral L'Après-midi d'un faune.

Thomas Heatherwick: The Master of Design

Sat, 19 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

To say Thomas Heatherwick has an enquiring mind would be an understatement. In conversation, the designer, 42, flits so fast between subjects that the effect is dizzying; one minute he is talking about the impact of the industrial revolution, the next about the tiny motor that drives the lens of a digital camera. He is every inch the mad inventor of popular imagination, his hair a riot of curls that stand up wherever he pushes them, his body alive with gestures, his floor-length red scarf sweeping along as if trying to keep up with him.

Invisible Ink: No 124 - Hans Fallada

Sat, 19 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

His pen-name was created from two characters in Grimm's fairy tales, but his novels had little in common with the moralistic fantasies of mittel-Europe. Rudolf Ditzen was a magistrate's son, raised in Berlin and immersed in Dickens, Flaubert and Dostoevsky. He became one of the greatest German authors of the 20th century, but was not translated into English until 2009.

Heads up: Cosmopolis

Sat, 19 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

What are we talking about? A new film adaptation of Don DeLillo's 2003 novel Cosmopolis, following a young billionaire asset manager as he tries to make his way across Manhattan in a very swish limo, in order to get a haircut.

How We Met: Chris Cox and Tim Minchin

Sat, 19 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Chris Cox, 28

Blade Runner with a female lead: All-action gals... just like mother

Sat, 19 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Women, one American female actor (Yancy Butler) famously said, have been kicking ass for centuries. Her point was that it is only relatively recently that they have been allowed to do so on the blockbuster screen, and not often at that. Perhaps more than any other action director, Ridley Scott can be credited with beginning to change that.

Falstaff, Royal Opera House, London The Sixteen, Old Royal Naval College Chapel, Greenwich

Sat, 19 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Untroubled by heartburn or hangover, happy as a honeymooner in his wine-stained bedsheets, Verdi's last great operatic hero smiles serenely over a dozen grease-spattered room-service trolleys. Of the many types of love celebrated in Falstaff – from the nudging camaraderie of rogues to the fluttering cadences of female friendship, the vertigo of first love and the sturdy affection of marriage – none is as pass-ionate or as nuanced as that of Sir John for his stomach. Raconteur, philosopher and adventurer, he is a man made misty-eyed by the memory of a single salted anchovy.

Kind Hearts and Coronets, Radio 4, Saturday Strap In - It's Clever Peter, Radio 4, Wednesday Beryl and Betty, BBC Radio Humberside, Saturday

Sat, 19 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Tricky though the film Kind Hearts and Coronets must have been for the many-roled Alec Guinness, it was almost certainly a doddle compared with Alistair McGowan's feat of portraying seven members of the Gascoyne family by voice alone, in yesterday's sequel. That there was never any doubt as to who was supposed to be whom was a tribute to his rightly lauded mimetic powers.

Moonrise Kingdom, Wes Anderson, 100 mins, 12A

Sat, 19 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

We can expect great things of Cannes – but not, it's a safe bet, too many laughs. You think the likes of Michael Haneke are here to amuse us? So, we'd best grab our merriment while we may, with Wes Anderson's opening film Moonrise Kingdom. Anderson's precise aesthete humour isn't to all tastes. But if it's not his best (that's surely The Royal Tenenbaums), Moonrise Kingdom is Anderson's most enjoyable film for a while. Following his animated Fantastic Mr Fox, it's the second time that Anderson has let out his inner child – in this case, his inner boy scout.

The Great Escape, Various venues, Brighton Jay-Z and Kanye West, The 02, London

Sat, 19 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Between bouts of dancing that resemble a drunken mum doing Kate Bush impressions at a wedding, Malin Dahlström of Niki & The Dove tells the audience: "You have no idea how exciting it is for a Swede to play a gig on a pier."

56 Up, ITV1, Monday The Hoarder Next Door, Channel 4, Thursday

Sat, 19 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Reading the TV schedule is like gazing into space: you pick out the familiar blobs and pass over a lot of unknown emptiness. Occasionally, a comet leaps out and surprises you, like The Killing. And then there's Up, a TV asteroid, which comes round every seven years.

Cannes round-up: Rust and Bone, Paradise: Love, After the Battle, Broken and Mekong Hotel

Sat, 19 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

It's the rule in Cannes: arrive champing at the bit for drop-dead masterpieces, and be prepared to swallow a few disappointments before things really warm up.

The Dictator, Larry Charles, 83 mins (15) 2 Days in New York, Julie Delpy, 91 mins (15) The Raid, Gareth Huw Evans, 90 mins (18)

Sat, 19 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Anyone who's seen both Borat ... and Ali G Indahouse will assume that Sacha Baron Cohen is a lot more entertaining when he's bouncing off unsuspecting members of the public than he is when he's working from a proper screenplay. But anyone who's seen The Dictator will revise that assumption, pronto. Tightly scripted by Baron Cohen and three alumni of Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm, it may well be his best film, as well as the year's best comedy.

The English Prize, Ashmolean

Sat, 19 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

A few days into 1779, a pair of French warships rounded on the Westmorland, a merchantman bound for London from Livorno. The captain, out-gunned, surrendered. The Westmorland was towed into Malaga, where its cargo – anchovies, parmesan and 90 crates of art and antiquities being shipped home by gentlemen on the Grand Tour – was split up and sold. The crates were bought by Carlos III, Spain's Franco-Italian king, their contents dispersed among royal collections.

Reality, Reality, By Jackie Kay

Sat, 19 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Short story collections sometimes lack unity, betraying their origins in a jumble of different commissions. In Jackie Kay's third collection, two stories stand out a little awkwardly: "The First Lady of Song" first appeared in Jeanette Winterson's anthology of opera-themed stories, Midsummer Nights. A bluesy riff on Jancek's The Makropulos Case, it's a fine piece of work but could have done with the Winterson book's brief opera synopsis to make full sense for the reader. Likewise, "Hadassah" perhaps suffers from being taken from its original context. (It was part of a performance cycle retelling Bible stories.) It is beautifully written but this voice of a trafficked woman feels like an exercise. An ongoing and horrible news story is in danger of turning into a literary cliché.