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\"Reading 120 books I did find myself thinking, 'Oh god, not another dead baby',\" said Kirsty Lang, the BBC journalist, as the longlist for the prize was announced. \"There were a hell of a lot of abused children and family secrets.\" Lang said: \"Yes, there were a lot of domestic dramas. Do I have a problem with that? Not really. Most fiction readers are women and we like our reading to reflect our experience. Women will write about domestic life because that is the reality of women's lives. I'd like to say the opposite, but it wouldn't be true.\" She said that a number of the long-listed novels tackled political themes \"through the prism of the family\", picking out Nancy Huston's Fault Lines, Gail Jones's Sorry, and Lauren Liebenberg's The Voluptuous Delights of Peanut Butter and Jam.

The artists Gilbert and George -- almost as famous for their beautifully cut matching suits and exquisite manners as for their provocative art -- have created a set of works prompted by the London bombs of July 2005.

[Carsten Holler]'s installation, called Test Site, will transform the museum into a madcap playground for the next six months - and not just for children. As it happens, the very grown-up Miuccia Prada, doyenne of fashion designers, has commissioned a slide from Holler. It ejects her through the window of her Milan office, past several storeys of toiling workforce, and straight to the street below, where her chauffeur awaits. The [Tate] has given assurances that the slides, which open to the public today, are perfectly safe. There are no age restrictions, but only those taller than 0.9 metres may slide down the smaller chutes, rising to a minimum of 1.4 metres for the higher ones. An expert from Germany flew in to check the weldings and screws (\"He seemed to have a great time for half a day,\" said Holler).

The 12 other shortlisted artists share pounds 18,000 between them. They include Jamie Shovlin, who created a detailed display of memorabilia relating to an invented late-1970s Berlin band called Lustfaust, and Simon Popper, who rearranged all the words of James Joyce's magnum opus Ulysses in alphabetical order, including 26 pages of the word \"the\". \"On the other hand, although artists don't think in terms of trends or 'schools' when they work, it is true that art has become more inclusive and social over the years. Artists are not necessarily fighting to get away from the people, but are part of the people and want to express themselves through their own life experiences, rather than making academic, detached work. If we now have a less deferential society, maybe that is reflected in the [more socially engaged] work that artists are making.\" Simon Popper , whose work for the show includes stacks of James Joyce's Ulysses, rearranged so that the words appear in alphabetical order, with punctuation marks bringing up the rear. \"Spunk\" appears five times; \"moustachioed\" once

Mr Maddock said the winner would be able to select a favourite piece of music to rehearse with the orchestra, or be given guidance in selecting a suitable work. The successful bidder is likely to be steered away from some of the longer, more ambitious works in the symphonic repertory: no Mahler symphonies, for example. \"There will be something in the small print that will discourage them from that kind of thing,\" Mr Maddock said.

The artistic director of some of the Edinburgh festival fringe's most prominent venues, the Assembly Theatres, has lashed out at the city's international festival, saying it is \"stuck in a single mould\", \"out of touch\", has \"lost its way\", and has an audience that is \"getting older and older\". As the Edinburgh festival fringe prepares officially to open on Sunday, William Burdett-Coutts said: \"I think the Edinburgh festival is the greatest live event in the world, but I question whether it has any direction. Apart from the \"official\" international festival, with its upscale performing arts programme, and the comedy and theatre- dominated fringe festival, Edinburgh also hosts film, book, art and jazz festivals this month.

For when the Kirov's London season opens on Monday, among such traditional favourites as Swan Lake, La Bayadere and Romeo and Juliet will be a programme of works by William Forsythe which famously rip apart both the conventions of classical ballet steps and the way classical ballet is performed. The Kirov has already added works to its repertory by the St Petersburg-born George Balanchine, who died in 1983, but Forsythe's work, with its conscious deconstruction of the ballet conventions held so sacred at the Kirov, is a much wilder departure. Aaron Watkin, currently Forsythe's choreographic assistant and ballet director-designate at the Dresden Ballet, taught Forsythe's works to the Kirov dancers.

The exhibition shows the kind of images that slipped off the radar or got edited from history, either by the subject or their protectors or, in the case of a series of photos of Elvis Presley, through pure chance. Presley's manager, the soi-disant Colonel Tom Parker, controlled his image mercilessly, but the star was beyond Parker's reach when he was drafted into the US army in 1959. At the Moulin Rouge strip bar in Munich one night, Presley was photographed surrounded by excited strippers and showgirls. \"They didn't surface for another 20 years, until after Presley's death,\" said [Robin Muir]. The pictures, of a terribly handsome, rather vulnera ble- looking boy, are a million miles from the lame-clad star with the cantilevered hairdo that the Colonel had contrived.

Sir Peter Jonas, [David Pountney]'s former colleague at ENO and now head of the Bavarian State Opera, said: \"If ENO are doing what the audience wants, they should have public executions on the stage of the Coliseum. After all, the public wants capital punishment.\" Dennis Marks, who succeeded Sir Peter at ENO, said: \"I am violently against it. It's yet another undermining of the principles on which ENO was founded.\" Sean Doran, ENO artistic director, said: \"When Lilian Baylis founded this company in 1931, her mission was to make opera as accessible as possible. Surtitles as a tool are vital if ENO is to continue this mission and continue to attract audiences.

The RSC has struck a deal with Sir [Cameron Mackintosh]'s company, Delfont Mackintosh, that will allow it to stage its annual London season in one of three West End theatres - the Novello (formerly the Strand), the Albery (soon to be renamed the Noel Coward) and the Gielgud. Delfont Mackintosh is the third-largest theatre operator in London. The arrangement will begin this December when the RSC moves into the Novello, now undergoing a pounds 3m refurbishment courtesy of Sir Cameron. It will present 16 weeks of comedy: Twelfth Night, directed by the RSC artistic director, Michael Boyd; Nancy Meckler's The Comedy of Errors; and Gregory Doran's Midsummer Night's Dream. The plays are in repertory at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, until October. The agreement with Delfont Mackintosh, she said, would allow the RSC to present 70 weeks of work over the next five years. The financial arrangement would involve \"paying a minimum fee and overheads\" to Sir Cameron's company, while retaining box office revenue.