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Laughing in a Foreign Language
The Hayward Gallery, London

HUMOUR is a serious business – or at least that is the impression given in Laughing in a Foreign Language, an exhibition that sets out to explore the role of laughter and humour in contemporary art. As Ralph Rugoff, director of the Hayward Gallery points out, while laughter is universal, humour is socially – and, he might have added, culturally – specific. But it is also individually specific, with, for example, some finding jokes about bodily functions side-splitting, while to others they are in poor taste.

The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan by Yasmin Khan
Yale University Press, £19.99

THE bulk of the scholarly literature on the partition since 1947 has focused on the political processes that led to the vivisection of India, the creation of Pakistan, and the “accompanying” violence. This new book by Yasmin Khan is an intelligent and timely analysis of that partition. It is splendidly researched and she has an eye for illuminating details of how partition affected everyday lives in the sub-continent.

Ashes to Ashes
BBC 1
Who Killed The Playboy Earl?
Channel 4

PERHAPS I’m losing my marbles but I don’t remember them playing the national anthem in 1981 every time BBC TV closed down for the night. However, I’m sure the researchers for new drama Ashes To Ashes will have checked up on it. Of course, television channels did shut down for the night in those primitive days, depriving us of all the phone-in quizzes, faded episodes of Star Trek and all-night snowboarding coverage we so enjoy today. I do recall the scarecrow shoulder pads featured in this new drama, however, as well as those enormous, bright red Thunderbirds-style specs we used to wear and Vodaphones the size of shoeboxes.

The Strange Death of David Kelly
by Norman Baker
Methuen, £9.99

THIS would be an easy book to mock – written by a slightly obsessive Liberal Democrat MP and containing all sorts of wild conspiracies. But to mock it, I think, would be a mistake.

Blair Unbound by Anthony Seldon with Peter Snowdon and Daniel Collings
Simon & Schuster, £25

THE enigma of Tony Blair has yet to be resolved. How was it possible for this relatively unknown young man, entering Parliament in 1983 at the age of 30, to transform the Labour Party, abandon its socialist message and trade union foundation and move the centre of gravity of British political life away from any ideological bearing?

Middlemarch
BBC 7

BBC RADIO 7 is currently doing us proud in broadcasting George Eliot’s masterpiece, Middlemarch, in 20 15-minute episodes over four weeks. It’s a classic novel and we’re back in the age of bustles, bonnets and top hats. But what this book has to tell us is always new. Everyone should read Middlemarch at school – and every few years thereafter on a regular basis. The interconnected storylines are enthralling. A series of familiar tales of human relationships are set in a world of rapid social, economic and technical change.

The Lover/The Collection
Comedy Theatre, London

HAROLD PINTER is not only an outspoken public intellectual, he’s also a very entertaining playwright. Now that audiences have got used to his particular kind of odd imagination, he can be played for laughs as well as for serious. He is also able to attract fine actors such as Gina McKee and Richard Coyle. And, because he’s been around since the 1950s, we can see how every generation gets the Pinter it deserves.

Taken by Force: Rape and American GIs in Europe in World War II by J Robert Lilly
Palgrave Macmillan, £19.99

THE publication in Britain of this book was delayed because of the invasion of Iraq. But given the issues of sexual abuse thrown up by that conflict, the publication – at last – of a book on the sensitive subject of wartime rape is well timed.

From Russia: French and Russian Master Paintings 1870–1925 from Moscow and St Petersburg
Royal Academy, London

THE joyful image of five naked women dancing hand in hand in a circle, by Henri Matisse – one of great paintings of the 20th century and one of the centrepieces of From Russia: French and Russian Masters – could be seen as a metaphor for the roundelay involved in getting the exhibition to this country. After protracted negotiations with the Russian authorities, the British Government agreed to an indemnity clause preventing any claims from the descendents of the two families who bought the paintings, who are saying – with some justification – that the work rightly belongs to them.

RECENTLY in Oxfam I picked up a paperback copy of John Simpson’s A Mad World, My Masters and, having spent several years with undergraduates of media and journalism, read it with great interest. By inclination I’m probably a pacifist, but I have to admit to a lifelong fascination with the military and the idea of empire. Maybe it’s because my dad was a gunner in the Great War and both my brothers were in the army and my boyhood was spent in Bath as the sun slowly sank on the British Empire. Here were to be found a fair number of retired colonial administrators, military and naval types enjoying their twilight years listening to bands in the park and sipping tea in the Pump Rooms. Then there were numerous parades and tattoos with echoes of empire: blaring bugles, sonorous brass and thumping drums…