With a new exhibition of his work at the National Gallery in London, a visit to the artist’s home town reveals the landscapes and industry that inspired him

The river rushes white around each of the large, flattish rocks as I tread tentatively over the stepping stones that Dovedale is famous for. This limestone valley on the border between Derbyshire and Staffordshire is a popular spot for day trips and hiking. Thankfully, it’s quiet on this brisk November morning, and I’m able to soak in the scene: the River Dove flowing fast, the autumn trees turning russet and gold, the green fold of hills rising around me.

On days like this, it’s clear why Dovedale has inspired creatives. One of those was the 18th-century artist Joseph Wright of Derby, whose work is being celebrated in a new exhibition at the National Gallery.

The author of Palestine turns his attention to the legacies of Indian partition in this brilliant portrait of the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots

Joe Sacco is one of a very small number of graphic novelists who have smashed through into the mainstream. His masterwork is Palestine , a collected volume of single-issue comic books he created in the 1990s, documenting the violence in Gaza. His technique is to embed as a journalist in a war zone and interview people on the street, telling their stories with pictures. Lessons on global politics emerge from ultra-local conflict and depictions of day-to-day life.

Palestine propelled Sacco to fame, drawing comparisons with Maus, Art Spiegelman’s two-volume saga about Polish Jews during the Holocaust with Nazis portrayed as cats, and Jews as mice. These works are sold prominently in bookshops, not in musty basements packed with racks of polyethylene-sheathed superhero comics. Alongside a couple of others, Maus and Palestine signalled that graphic novels, as they became known, could be serious works of fiction, nonfiction and journalism. Palestine itself is as depressingly relevant today as it was in the 1990s. In December 2023, it was reprinted for the first time in a decade, after selling out following the 7 October attacks.

Fans and experts consider whether the artist may have been neurodivergent. Plus: inside the biggest Irish dancing challenge in the world. Here’s what to watch this evening

9pm, BBC Two
JMW Turner is an enigma. But while he didn’t leave behind a diary, he did leave 37,000 private sketches that give clues to his character – and they have been made public for the first time. Clinical psychologist Orna Guralnik, actor Timothy Spall (who played the painter in Mr Turner), artist Tracey Emin and naturalist Chris Packham are some of the fans who search for insight via these pages – and question whether he was neurodivergent. Hollie Richardson

The Shed, New York

The actor indulges his love of the past in a breezily enjoyable play about a man falling for a woman from the 1930s, played by a standout Kelli O’Hara

Tom Hanks is a star who’s always had one foot squarely in the past. As an actor he’s forever been likened to James Stewart , a reincarnation of the charming, essentially good American everyman, a from-another-era lead who’s increasingly been more comfortable in period fare (in the last decade, he’s appeared in just four present-day films). As a producer, he’s gravitated toward historical shows such as Band of Brothers, John Adams and The Pacific; his directorial debut was 60s-set music comedy That Thing You Do! and his undying obsession, outside of acting, is the typewriter, collecting and writing about its throwback appeal.

In his new play, The World of Tomorrow, his fondness for the “good old days” has led to the inevitable, a story about a man with a fondness for the “good old days” who actually gets to experience one of them for himself. It’s a loosely familiar tale of time travel, based on a short story written by Hanks that tries, and half-succeeds, to bring something new to a table we’ve sat at many times before.

Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer, which was looted by the Nazis and nearly destroyed in a fire during the second world war, sells at Sotheby’s auction

A painting by Gustav Klimt has sold for a record-breaking $236.4m (£179.7m, A$364m) with fees, making it the second most expensive artwork ever sold at auction and the most expensive work of modern art sold at auction.

The six-foot-tall painting, titled Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer, was painted by the Austrian painter between 1914 and 1916 and shows Lederer, a young heiress and daughter of Klimt’s patrons, draped in a Chinese robe.

This heart-stopping Danish investigation about a mob lawyer turned whistleblower is more dramatic than Scandi-noir as it drops one huge revelation after another. It’s easy to see why it absolutely rocked Denmark

As film-maker Mads Brügger explains at the outset of this four-part documentary series, a black swan is the name given to an event so extraordinary that you could never have seen it coming. In this case, Brügger’s black swan isn’t an event so much as a person: a lawyer named Amira Smajic, a “once in a lifetime” source for a journalist and the person who – he says – could “force us to rethink Danish society”. Smajic has spent years acting on behalf of some of the country’s most infamous criminal gangs, and is now exposing their activities as part of this major investigation for the state-owned broadcaster TV 2. Crucially, it’s not just the criminal underworld that Smajic is laying bare, but also their white-collar accomplices – the seemingly respectable businesspeople and lawyers unfazed by escapades involving dirty money and fraudulent invoices. It’s a co-dependent arrangement – one section of society “is feeding the other, and vice versa”, says Smajic.

It would be an understatement to say that The Black Swan made an impact on Danish viewers. Half of all Danes watched it when it aired in 2024, and it sparked a string of police investigations, as well as a tightening of laws around money laundering and gang activity. It has also turned the country’s almost prelapsarian vision of itself on its head. Brügger – a steely, often sandpaper-dry compere who has previously gone undercover in North Korea for the film The Red Chapel – claims making The Black Swan has shown him that the country could be “grim and dark”. Simply put: something was rotten in the state of Denmark.

It’s easy to see why the series has had such an impact. As well as the huge revelations it uncovers, the way The Black Swan unfolds often seems to go beyond the work of even some of the best Nordic noir dramatists. Our anti-heroine, Smajic, arrived in Denmark as a child refugee amid the Bosnian war. A legitimate career gave way to working with the mob, and she would go on to be dubbed the “ice queen” by her associates for her ruthless practices. And yet, as the series unfolds, Smajic uses those same practices to obtain a huge cache of evidence for Brügger and his team, often putting herself in seemingly imminent danger as she documents all manner of nefarious activities from a Copenhagen office rigged with hidden mics and cameras. While the production has arranged safety measures for Smajic during her six-month stint as their inside woman, it is still risky business. But as she explains, this could be her only way out of a life of crime that has become so innate to her being, and which she likens to being addicted to drugs.

Many of the scenes that unfold defy belief, not least those that involve Fasar Abrar Raja, a Rasputin-esque former member of the Bandidos biker club whose rap sheet includes convictions for assault, possession of firearms and drug smuggling. His braggadocio and insolence slowly turn to something darker. By episode three, broadcast next week, he threatens to “crush [Smajic] with my bare hands”.

The hit BBC crime drama is coming back to screens for the first time since its record-breaking 2021 finale

BBC hit crime drama Line of Duty has been confirmed to return for a seventh series. A new six-part season following police anti-corruption investigations was today announced by the BBC.

“ We couldn’t be more delighted to be returning for a seventh [series],” said creator Jed Mercurio. “Corruption in this country is supposed to have come to an end while Line of Duty was off air so I’ve been forced to use my imagination.”

Jane Ghosh says it’s time to value all library workers, while Keith Flett wonders if the local MP can help

Zadie Smith commendably pays tribute to the staff who make available the wonderful cultural gems in the British Library ( Does Britain value culture any more? Ask the striking workers at the British Library, 11 November ). For decades, libraries all round Britain have suffered successive cuts, which have meant many have closed or are run by volunteers.

Librarians do not have a single high-profile trade union looking out for their pay and working conditions. So, unlike teachers, for example, they are unable to exert pressure to be paid on a similar level, given that the professional qualifications required are equally rigorous, and in some institutions exceed those of other professionals.

Former commissioner for culture Neil Mendoza says the sector must acknowledge the support it gets from all parties

Helen Marriage, a hugely respected cultural leader, writes that “there is no political party that will commit to the kind of investment needed to keep a living art and culture ecology alive” ( Durham’s Lumiere festival was a beacon of hope and togetherness – we cannot let the lights go out on the rest of the arts, 11 November ). But she also places the responsibility on all of us. She wants the culture sector to make a better case. But can it?

As commissioner for culture in the last government, I remain surprised that large funding decisions directed at culture have been forgotten, devalued and ignored, perhaps because the sources were then from a Conservative government.