A rare letter that gives an insight into the cosseted life first class passengers enjoyed on board the Titanic is expected to fetch up to £25,000 at auction. The letter, from perfumer Adolphe Saafeld to his “wifey”, as he calls her, describes fine lunches, long dinners, satisfying cigars and strolls around the ill-fated liner. The letter, dated 10 April 1912, the first day of the voyage, reads: “Dear Wifey, Thanks for your wire … The weather is calm and fine, the sky overcast. “So far the boat does not move and goes very steadily. It is not nice to travel alone a ... Jump to full article >>

At last, a production of Shakespeare’s love story that’s worthy of the play’s reputation. So many productions handle Romeo And Juliet like grandma’s china, but not Rupert Goold’s darkly gothic, though overblown RSC production. This is a helterskelter whirlwind, matching the play’s violent passion with a frantic performance. Goold boots into touch every cliché associated with the play – including the convention of having a pair of pretty leading lovers. Dressed in a T-shirt featuring copulating skeletons, like some Emo heroine, Mariah Gale’s Juli ... Jump to full article >>

The museum is hosting an exhibition exploring the British tradition of quilt making over the centuries, which has been used to shock and inform as well as comfort. Works range from a late 17th-century cot cover to provocative bedspreads by contemporary artists like Emin and Grayson Perry. The display features the first showing in the UK of Emin’s 2002 work To Meet My Past, described by the museum as ”confessional” and in the tradition of quilts being used to record memories. The installation uses traditional floral prints and comprises a painted brass bed with stitched blanke ... Jump to full article >>

The moment you walk into the theatre to see this amazing show, written by Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman, you hear an eerie soundtrack: dripping taps, howling wind, a very strange buzz. This vibration reminded me of “infrasound”, a very low sound frequency that makes you scared and convinced something’s standing behind you. Parapsychologists believe this sound is often found in haunted places – and in the theatre, it proved seriously unnerving. People were screaming before the show had even started. The show takes the form of a lecture from a parapsychologist, who discusses th ... Jump to full article >>

‘My best performances are the ones I can never remember,” says Charlemagne Palestine. “The music takes me into a kind of trance, and the next thing I know, it’s over.” When he began playing, the trance might last five hours; it might see Palestine pounding away at a pair of grand pianos until the instruments had been thoroughly detuned; it might end with the keyboards left covered in Palestine’s blood, from hands battered raw on the ivory. He would appear in his colourful wardrobe of scarves and hats, sipping cognac and smoking cigarettes, a menagerie of sof ... Jump to full article >>

The promo for their first feature film together is a pallid, by-the-numbers video that completely fails to live up to the duo’s trademark wit, laments Anna Pickard. You might think he’s a soaring genius. You might think he’s a grating egotist. You might think he’s both. But one thing you’ve just got to think is that Ricky Gervais is prolific. Here’s his latest film. It looks like a nice, gentle, coming-of-age, small-town-nostalgic film – particularly if your age of coming was the mid-1970s, and the small town you’re nostalgic for is Reading. Well, Re ... Jump to full article >>

The cream of one of Europe’s most highly regarded corporate art collections is to be dispersed by Sotheby’s next week in spite of efforts by civil authorities and art experts to preserve it and turn it into a museum. Known as the Peter Stuyvesant collection, it originated in the late 1950’s when Alexander Orlow, managing director of Turmac Tobacco, which made the popular Peter Stuyvesant brand of cigarettes in its factory in Zevenaar, Holland, decided his workforce needed something to cheer them up. “However complicated the operations of a machine may look, it soon becomes monotonous t ... Jump to full article >>