Sympathy for the devil (Prospect)
Heidi Holland's biography of Robert Mugabe does something deeply unsettling - it makes one feel the dictator's pain.
Way out west (Sight & Sound)
Trollywood, as the area has inevitably become known, is not a popular name with the industry’s pioneers. Moodysson, whose Show me Love, Together and Lilya 4-ever were all made here, hates the term and clearly sees Trollhättan as the antithesis of everything Hollywood represents.
Cut is the branch (Daily Telegraph)
"I am a woodlander; I have sap in my veins," Roger Deakin writes. The late author is on a mission to get to the heart of something huge and elemental - to understand not just trees, but the very essence of wood.
Rokeby Venus: The painting that shocked a suffragette (BBC news online)
It's the last word in sensual languor. And one of the most famous bottoms of all time.
Roald Dahl and the darkness within (BBC News online)
There's a perception that children's literature involves endless picnics where the strawberry jam and lashings of ginger beer never run out.
Far from the crowds in Hardy’s backyard (Financial Times magazine)
In a pretentious moment, one might call Hardy a writer of terroir. Far From the Madding Crowd, while lacking the tragic grandeur of Tess, Jude or The Woodlanders, is the first novel to refer to Wessex by name.
On the edge (New Statesman)
That there were once 300 of these quasi-socialist experiments in public leisure, and that there remain fewer than a hundred, reveals much about how our municipal culture has changed.
From the frontlines of procrastination (Daily Telegraph)
Throughout this memoir, Egeland presents himself as one of the more assertive elements in the UN, who likes to "speak truth to power".
The eyes of the world fall on Burton on Trent (Guardian)
Ever since its non-league football team was drawn against Manchester United in the third round of the FA Cup back in December, this sleepy town where nothing ever happens has been temporarily roused. And it all comes down to identity.
Roland TR-808: the drum machine that refused to die (BBC News online)
The Roland TR-808 flopped commercially. So how did this drum machine become a defining sound in dance music, pop and rock?