Music 

The rise of the Watson Twins

They've just released Fire Songs and The Watson Twins' southern balladry makes them alt-country blue bloods

The Festival Hall's acoustics

Just over a year ago, the Royal Festival Hall in London reopened. How are the acoustics now, asks David Carins

Mancunian band The Whip are here for the crack

The Manchester quartet’s ‘electronic sweat music’ is raising pulses. Ed Potton witnesses a hot night on their home turf

Beck on his Modern Guilt

Fatherhood has made 38-year-old pop polymath Beck restless. Pete Paphides joins him house hunting in... Southampton

Film 

Life still isn't easy for Uma Thurman

The Hollywood star has just got engaged to one of the world's most eligible bachelors. This time, she says, it's different

Why Ben Barnes is the people's Prince

Narnia star Ben Barnes is set for stardom, starting with his Caspian based on Harry and Wills, says Stephen Armstrong

What do Hollywood actors really earn?

According to SAG, average annual income is a mere $52,000 (£26,000) - before agents, lawyers and managers take their cut

Mamma Mia! The Musical premieres in Leicester Square

The crowd waved Swedish flags to the Abba music that played incessantly for the London film premiere

TV & Radio 

Bryan Appleyard on the brilliance of The Wire

The Wire's brilliant writing means that it - and The Shield and Dexter -amount to America’s national theatre

Life on Mars creators unveil Bonekickers

The Life on Mars team have turned their attention to archaeology with Bonekickers. Have they found gold, asks Terry Ramsey

The show where the stars weep

Why does an American cable show reduce so many celebrities to blubbering wrecks? Caitlin Moran investigates

Big Brother's Jennifer and Rex face eviction

Enemies Jennifer and Rex face eviction from the house, after their fellow housemates nominated them for Friday's public vote

Visual arts 

Wyndham Lewis's big mistake

Yes, he was a fascist sympathiser, but the firebrand vorticist Wyndham Lewis is still one of our finest portraitists

Noguchi's versatile work is big and bold

Sculptor Isamu Noguchi is fêted as America’s Henry Moore. Now it’s our turn to judge, says Morgan Falconer

British Museum 'is most popular'

Museum says last year was its most successful ever as it attracted 6.04m, with the terracotta warriors a key reason

Jean Nouvel - the architect as artist

'Architects take emotions from the streets, the art galleries; they steal,' says the controversial Frenchman

Times Literary Supplement 

Fair play for the CIA

We must not forget that the CIA was formed in an era of civic trust and patriotism

Storms over stem cells

The biology and politics of a true scientific revolution

The Gods of New Spain

In the conquest of pre-Christian America, the traffic between late-medieval beliefs and local religions was not all one-way

Isaac Rosenberg, an artist in the ranks

A new biography of one of the great War Poets reveals him to be an admirable figure

• Then and Now

Stage 

Connie Fisher: life after Maria?

Demanding diva or true pro? What next for the telesales girl thrust into the limelight by a television competition?

Short plays: the survival of the one-act wonder

Short plays have been sadly neglected for too long. Why don't theatres like them?

Atkins, the most 'astonishingly lucky person'

She loves lewd limericks, hates sentimentality, and turned down Colin Farrell; Lucy Powell meets the feisty Eileen Atkins

Heirs reach deal over Pavarotti estate

Adriatic villa given to daughters from first marriage but status of American assets left to widow is yet to be settled

Books 

Playing the enemy

How Nelson Mandela won the greatest game with rugby

Wife in the North

How a committed Londoner learnt to love life in Northumberland

Bitchiness breaks out in world of biography

Author is accused of turning the genteel world of historical biography into a playground for glamorous young female writers

The Jew rejected by the Promised Land

The newly created Israel was meant to be a sanctuary for Jews after the Holocaust but some found themselves outcasts once again