Art and design

Grayson Perry: How I went behind the scenes at the British Museum
Turner prize-winning transvestite potter Grayson Perry long cherished an ambition to show his own art – his own 'civilisation', as he calls it – alongside the great ancient civilisations of the world – but little dreamed the British Museum would agree to his proposal…
• Grayson Perry's Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman - in pictures

Neon: 100 years of the greatest light show on earth
Peter Conrad celebrates a century of the medium that sells the raffish charms of America and has inspired film-makers and artists, from Hitchcock and Coppola to Bruce Nauman and Tracey Emin
• 100 years of neon - in pictures

Music

Tom Waits: 'I look like hell but I'm going to see where it gets me'
It's decades since Tom Waits had a drink and his music has just got weirder and better. With his 17th album out, he heads for his local roadhouse (for coffee) and talks about songwriting, hard living and his fear of phones

Adele: the girl with the mighty mouth
As the London singer conquers both Britain and America with a smash-hit No 1 album, we meet a superstar in the making

Books

Why don't we love our intellectuals?
While France celebrates its intelligentsia, you have to go back to Orwell and Huxley to find British intellectuals at the heart of national public debate. Why did we stop caring about ideas? When did 'braininess' become a laughing matter?
• Who are our great, neglected intellectuals?

Karen Green: 'David Foster Wallace's suicide turned him into a "celebrity writer dude", which would have made him wince'
David Foster Wallace, the most gifted and original American novelist of his generation, took his own life in 2008. His widow, the artist Karen Green, talks of the struggle to deal her loss and her decision to publish his unfinished work, The Pale King

The best of our graphic short story prize
The Cape/Observer/Comica Graphic Short Story Prize has been running for five years, discovering and publishing the writers and artists of the future. Here, competition judge and graphic novelist extraordinaire, Bryan Talbot has brought together his favourite entries
• This year's winner, chosen from more than 200 entries, was Isabel Greenberg

Stage

Jude Law: 'I was a great champion of the human spirit. I lost that for a time'
Jude Law has been one of Britain's foremost actors. But with fame came intense press scrutiny of his private life. Now, at 38, he says he is looking forward to his 'most productive decade' – starting with a West End play

Film

Joyce Carol Vincent: How could this young woman lie dead and undiscovered for almost three years?
When the film-maker Carol Morley read that the skeleton of a young woman had been found in a London bedsit, she knew she had to find out more…

The 10 best Woody Allen jokes - in pictures
As his US hit Midnight in Paris opens here, we look back at his genius
• Woody Allen interview: 'My wife hasn't seen most of my films... and she thinks my clarinet playing is torture'