Paul Whitington

This year promises to provide a feast of fresh offerings for film fans. Classic novels Wuthering Heights and Frankenstein will get the big screen treatment, directed by Emerald Fennel and Maggie Gyllenhaal respectively.

From a movie for fans of Succession to a dazzling album by a Mercury Prize nominee, from a comedy mystery featuring Kylie to a book on the colourful romps of Britain’s first king, 2025 delivered in spades. In case you missed them first time round, here are some great picks worth catching:

This year promises to provide a feast of fresh offerings for film fans. Classic novels Wuthering Heights and Frankenstein will get the big screen treatment, directed by Emerald Fennel and Maggie Gyllenhaal respectively.

John Lanchester’s wit and storytelling nous have pulled him in numerous directions. His last novel, The Wall (2019), was a worryingly plausible dystopian satire, and in previous works he has addressed the 2008 financial crisis, his Hong Kong childhood, his parents’ marriage and the adventures of unhinged loners.

Charles Dickens described the Thames as “an image of death”, which lapped “at piles and posts and iron rings, hiding strange things in its mud, running away with ­suicides and accidentally drowned ­bodies”.

Despite the fact that we're not there, this World Cup has proved particularly addictive, with many fools (including your correspondent) staying up to all hours to watch games in which we have no skin.

Thomas Levenson gives us a fascinating potted history of vaccination, and points out that anti-vax arguments are in fact 18th century objections repurposed for the modern age

“That new Portuguese bloke at Chelsea — he's got a lot to say.” This was the great Nottingham Forest coach, Brian Clough, speaking in 2004, and