28/04/2012

Sarfraz Manzoor and his guests Lisa Appignanesi, Kevin Jackson and Natalie Haynes review the week's cultural highlights. In his film Avengers Assemble Joss Whedon brings together Marvel action heroes Iron Man, Thor, The Hulk, Captain America, Hawkeye and the Black Widow as they battle to stop Loki from taking over the Earth with his alien army. Michele Roberts' novel Ignorance revolves around two girls - Jeanne and Marie-Angele - who are schoolfriends in pre-war France but whose relationship and loyalties change as the Germans invade and the differences in their backgrounds becomes more significant. Making Noise Quietly is a series of three short plays by Robert Holman which has been revived at the Donmar Warehouse in London by Peter Gill. Each play features characters whose lives are affected in one way or another by war. To coincide with the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich has put on an exhibition - Royal River: Power, Pageantry and the Thames - curated by David Starkey. The exhibition aims to show how this waterway has been used as a stage to celebrate significant moments in the nation's life over the past five centuries. The Wind in the Willows with Griff Rhys Jones is an ITV1 documentary which looks at what inspired Kenneth Grahame to write this much-loved children's classic. Producer: Torquil MacLeod.