10/09/2011

Tom Sutcliffe and his guests poet Craig Raine, creative director of the Royal Opera House Deborah Bull and literary critic John Carey review the week's cultural highlights including the film Jane Eyre. Rupert Goold's site specific production Decade is a performance piece with contributions from 19 writers about the 9/11 attacks on New York. Performed at St Katherine's Dock in London, audience members enter through metal detectors and a security check to find themselves in a mock-up of the Windows restaurant at the top of the World Trade Center. Cary Joji Fukunaga's film Jane Eyre stars Mia Wasikowska as Charlotte Bronte's orphaned heroine and Michael Fassbender as the forbidding Mr Rochester - a man with a dark secret. Moira Buffini wrote the screenplay. The Map and The Territory is the latest novel by Michel Houellebecq and the one which finally secured for him France's most prestigious literary prize - the Prix Goncourt. Its central character is a solitary artist - Jed Martin - who asks celebrated novelist Michel Houellebecq to write an essay for his catalogue and then decides that he would like to paint Houellebecq's portrait. The Power of Making is a free exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London which celebrates the traditions and innovations of craft. It brings together more than a hundred beautifully made objects ranging from David Mach's sculpture of a gorilla made out of wire coat hangers to Peter Butcher's embroidered surgical implant. Fresh Meat is the latest comedy from Peep Show writers Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong. It's about a disparate group of students accidentally thrown together in off-campus lodging in Manchester, one of whom is Kingsley, played by Joe Thomas from The InBetweeners. Producer: Torquil MacLeod.