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Joining Tom this week:

Novelist Lawrence Norfolk
Actor Kerry Shale
Broadcaster and critic Bidisha

Twelfth Night
Derek Jacobi has played Francis Bacon, Guy Burgess, the title role in I, Claudius and a host of Shakespeare characters. Now, in the latest production in the Donmar Warehouse’s residency in the West End, he pulls on the yellow stockings of one of Shakespeare’s grouchiest creations, Malvolio, in a production by feted director Michael Grandage. But will West End audiences warm to this production of Shakespeare’s Christmas play?

Twelfth Night is at the Wyndham’s Theatre in central London until 7 March 2009.

The Day the Earth Stood Still
In 1951, at the height of the Cold War, a movie called The Day the Earth Stood Still had an alien land on Earth and warn that humankind would pay dearly for its nuclear aggression. 57 years later, the alien is back - looking a lot like Keanu Reeves - and this time he wants to wipe us out to save the Earth’s ecosystem. But are ‘alien invasion’ stories as good at tapping into our fears, now that we no longer live under the shadow of imminent atomic war?

The Day the Earth Stood Still is on release from Friday 12 December, certificate 12A.

Land of Marvels
Historical novelist Barry Unsworth, joint winner of the Booker Prize for Sacred Hunger in 1992, has found pre-echoes of the present in a wide range of times and places. Now he excavates pre-First World War Iraq to uncover a narrative about Imperial ambition in the Middle East, centred on an archaeological dig.

Land of Marvels by Barry Unsworth is published by Hutchinson in the New Year.

The Magnificence of the Tsars
If the diplomatic relationship between the UK and Russia is rather frosty at the moment, the cultural links between Moscow and London seem to be thriving this winter. In the wake of an exhibition of 18th and 19th century British fashion in the Russian capital, the V&A now plays host to an exhibition of the clothes the Tsars wore to get crowned, hold court, attend funerals and lead armies. What do they reveal about the deep tensions in the heart of Russian power, pulling the country now towards the West, now towards the heartlands?

The Magnificence of the Tsars is at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London until 29 March.

Christmas Lights
The lights over London’s Regent Street strike a rather different note to those of previous years. In place of the colourful displays of the past, Portuguese design company Castros have created a series of white stars. They’ve also decorated two other central London streets – Bond Street and Jermyn Street. So do their creations make Tom, Kerry, Lawrence and Bidisha’s eyes light up?

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