Dmitry Krymov, who fled Moscow after the Ukraine invasion, plans Dickens hybrid with UK and Russian actors

The acclaimed Russian stage director Dmitry Krymov the winner of many of Moscow’s top theatre prizes before his exile due to public criticism of the invasion of Ukraine, has spoken angrily of the impact of the war ahead of his first work with British actors. The Moscow-born director, 70, plans to use Dickens’s two stories Great Expectations and Hard Times to create a new performance.

Arriving in London this weekend for a short stay, Krymov, who is regarded by many western theatre pundits as among the best directors in the world , told the Observer he wants to link British and Russian performers and audiences, despite the divisions caused by President Vladimir Putin.

British artist, 87, who was visited by the king in his London home, said he did not know him well enough to paint him

Renowned artist David Hockney has said he did not offer to paint King Charles when the monarch visited his London home on Monday because he doesn’t know him well enough.

This is not the first time that Hockney has shied away from painting royalty. The 87-year-old also refused a number of offers to paint the late Queen Elizabeth II because he only paints people he knows.

The punk guitarist on the ideal length of gigs, stealing from David Bowie’s trucks and dealing with an ornery Jerry Lee Lewis

Is it true you nicked some of your early equipment from David Bowie’s trucks outside the Hammersmith Odeon at the last Ziggy Stardust show , in 1973?

There’s definitely some truth in that. It wasn’t outside in trucks though – it was on the stage! They played two nights, and after the first night they left all the gear up, because they were playing there the next night. I knew the Hammersmith Odeon like the back of my hand, I used to bunk in there all the time. I was like the Phantom of Hammersmith Odeon.

The Sex Pistols are touring Australia 5 -11 April; see here for dates

The International Booker-longlisted Italian novelist on why he chose to rewrite Georges Perec, his preference for description over dialogue and being part of an anti-gentrification collective in Milan

Vincenzo Latronico, 40, was born in Rome and grew up in Milan. In 2009, he moved to Berlin, the setting of his fourth novel, Perfection , currently longlisted (in Sophie Hughes’s translation) for the International Booker prize. Ecstatically reviewed, it updates Georges Perec’s 1965 novel Things: A Story of the Sixties , about advertising’s impact on an aspirational young French couple, recast by Latronico as expat digital creatives whose first reflex “if they spilled some coffee... was to press Command-Z” to undo it. Speaking from Milan, his home again since 2023, Latronico laughs when I quote the line: “That happens to me all the time!”

Why did you want to rewrite Perec’s Things ?
It was almost a way to keep my mental health in lockdown. I thought: “OK, you’re not managing to write anything creative, so just pedantically rewrite Perec.” It took on a life of its own but began as an exercise in keeping busy. I’d been struggling for years to capture the way our inner life is shaped by the flow of images we see online. My sexuality is defined by images I’ve seen of how people have sex; my apartment is defined by images of other people’s apartments... I read Things and immediately saw parallels. Perec was trying to describe the life of someone whose identity is defined by their relationship to objects. He flipped the hierarchy of a traditional novel by putting his characters in the background; the detail of their surroundings becomes the main stage, which was exactly what I needed.

In his designs, William Morris combined his two greatest passions: the wonder of nature and a socialist belief that everyone should have access to art and beauty. His work has become almost too successful, reproduced on iPhone cases, shopping trolleys and AI-fabricated posters. A new exhibition at the William Morris Gallery brings together everyday items decorated with his patterns, including many featured in photographs sent to the gallery by members of the public. “We’ve been overwhelmed with the response and have everything from collapsible walking sticks to chopsticks, and all manner of mugs and crockery,” says the gallery’s director, Hadrian Garrard. “The sheer brilliance of his designs and the fact that he wanted people to observe and appreciate a perfect expression of nature is something that endures.”

• Morris Mania will be at the William Morris Gallery, London E17, from 5 April to 21 September

The former manchild’s performance as an industry suit in new series The Studio shows how far he has come in Hollywood

In Seth Rogen’s new satirical series, The Studio , Rogen plays the newly appointed head of a major Hollywood production company – and there was a time when that alone would have been the joke.

The goofy, schlubby, pre-eminent manchild of mainstream comedy, handed the role of a powerful industry suit – the fish-out-of-water jokes would have written themselves. But Matt Remick, Rogen’s character in The Studio , isn’t a manchild but a man: a pretty regular middle-aged one, trying to do good, honest work in a sour, cynical business.

The institution is hardly known for being radical but its refusal to accept Arts Council subsidies is a revolutionary move

The news that Wigmore Hall in London is to turn its back on an annual subsidy of £345,000 from Arts Council England (ACE), after a successful campaign to raise £10m from individuals and the private sector, is almost as beautiful to my ears as the last thing I heard there, which was the Dunedin Consort playing Henry Purcell.

Its director, John Gilhooly, is surely right to free his institution from the Let’s Create strategy, which informs all ACE’s funding decisions, linking subsidies to onerous outreach work rather than to excellence in performance. Such organisations shouldn’t have to do what is properly the work of the government, and perhaps the Wigmore’s decision is the start of resistance to this. I certainly hope so.

The author and podcast host on a favourite restaurant, adventures in scholastic research for his PhD and the second series of Squid Game

Born George Mpanga in north-west London in 1991, George the Poet is a spoken-word artist, author and podcast host. He studied politics, psychology and sociology at King’s College, Cambridge and is now doing a PhD at UCL about the economic and cultural potential of black music. Aged 22 he signed with Island Records and released an EP before stepping away from the music industry. His award-winning podcast, Have You Heard George’s Podcast? , launched in 2018. Last year he published Track Record: Me, Music and the War on Blackness . He will perform in RISE at the Royal Festival Hall on 25 April, as part of the Southbank Centre’s new arts festival, Multitudes.

The opera singer, 59, on his love of Wales, performing for the King, and where he goes to let his hair down

I had an angelic childhood. I was brought up on a sheep farm in Pant Glas, north Wales, with my older brother Ian. My father was a farmer, my mum worked in a school for children with disabilities, and they and my grandparents were in different choirs. There was always singing in the household, pieces of music on the kitchen cupboards.

I’d stand on a table and sing an Elvis song at the drop of a hat. I wasn’t a boy soprano, but I entered into competitions in the Welsh festival, Eisteddfod. That allowed me to think of singing as a career. Any given weekend, you can compete either singing, reciting or playing an instrument.