The Divine Comedy news

It's Tuesday! Time for another round of "5 Must-Hear Pop Songs of the Week"! This week's roundup features killer cuts from two of my favorite bands with new albums out this month, a new groove by Rihanna's favorite hitmaker, some booty droppin' motivation from M.I.A.'s protégé and a surprise pop offering by Hollywood's most flawless [...]

Good morning, readers, this is what's happening in your county today:  

A ‘Gig with a Difference’ – TrócaireLive to Showcase Irish Music and Highlight Global Campaigns

The Magnetic Fields will be at the Royal Festival Hall on 25 April. There’s a case for saying that The Magnetic Fields is probably the best band most people have never heard of. Led by acclaimed singer-songwriter Stephin Merritt, the band that have crossed genres like a drunken jaywalker are coming to the Southbank Centre next month and we managed to get a transatlantic word in edgeways with ...

As a new touring stage production of Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons Tale sails into Norwich, IAN COLLINS looks at a saga of adventure where the author’s own life was surely even stranger than his fiction. Plus: Neil Hannon Q&A.

WHILE THERE CAN be a self-conscious, overly earnest and cultural snobbery aspect to awards that emphasise artistic merit over cash-till takings, they still fulfil a fundamental and necessary role in shining a light into the dark, unrecognised corners of literature, music and drama and, more often than not, their findings can prove enlightening.

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We have ten family tickets to give away for a new production of children’s classic Swallows and Amazons, directed by Tom Morris (War Horse) and featuring music by Neil Hannon (The Divine Comedy).

They may have had to dodge heavy showers but nothing could dampen the spirit of tens of thousands of revellers at the V Festival. The weekend sellout at Chelmsford is East Anglia's premier music festival and was headlined by Radiohead, Morrissey and Faithless.

"Oh! Who can ever be tired of Bath?" breathed Catherine Morland, the star-struck 17-year-old heroine of Northanger Abbey. Who indeed? Literary folk, fictional and otherwise, have always been drawn, like heat-seeking missiles, to the city: Defoe, Fielding, Smollett, Fanny Burney. Jane Austen lived there for five years. Mr Pickwick came to try the waters (which conveyed to Sam Weller "a very ...

Theatre is again becoming an outlet for raging against the machine in central and eastern Europe, and the Hungarian government in particular is cracking down in an all too familiar fashion, writes PETER CRAWLEY