The New York Dolls frontman has died aged 75

Parents trying to decode youth speak are leaving nothing for the young to identify as their own

For some time I’ve wondered if there is anything – anything at all – young people can have just for themselves, without older people trying to gatecrash the party?

A Tesco Mobile survey has revealed the slang words and phrases that generation Z uses, and which confuse their parents and older people in general. This is the traditional point when one is supposed to muse, baffled, over youth vernacular, perhaps balk at the Clockwork Orange- esque strangeness of it all.

The New York-based Irish author on being compelled to write about the big issues, his fear for friends in the Middle East and why Frankenstein is a metaphor for our times

The award-winning Irish author Colum McCann was born in Dublin in 1965 and worked as a journalist before moving to the US and turning his hand to books. His novels include Let the Great World Spin , which won the 2011 International Dublin literary award, and 2020’s Apeirogon , which took a kaleidoscopic view of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Last year he co-wrote the memoir American Mother with Diane Foley , whose son, US journalist James Foley, was murdered by Islamic State in Syria in 2014. In his latest novel, Twist (published on 6 March), an Irish journalist on a cable repair ship off the west coast of Africa is confronted by questions of environmental destruction, information overload and colonialism. McCann lives in New York with his wife Allison and their three children.

Undersea communications cables are underexplored in fiction. What prompted you to write about them?
In the early part of the pandemic, I was thinking a lot about the notion of repair, because things were shattering around us fairly frequently. Somewhere I fell upon the story of the Léon Thévenin , a cable repair ship out of South Africa. Like everybody else, I thought that [digital] information went up from our phones and hit these satellites and came back down. I was really taken by the notion that it all happens in the bottom of the deep black sea. Bizarrely, since I started writing it, undersea cables are now being cut left, right and centre – the Houthis in the Red Sea, the Russians and Chinese in the Baltic. We’re going to be talking about it a lot more in the years to come.

Flamboyant singer helped point his city’s music scene towards punk, before a successful solo career and eye-catching acting roles

David Johansen, the swaggering, peacocking frontman with glam rock band New York Dolls, has died aged 75.

Last month he had announced he was living with cancer, and recently suffered a broken back. “David Johansen passed away peacefully at home, holding the hands of his wife Mara Hennessey and daughter Leah, in the sunlight surrounded by music and flowers,” reads a statement on a website created to raise funds for his medical care.

Drop the pretence: instead of parading a love of highbrow literature, just enjoy the books you want to read

Toughen up. It’s the end of the line for soft, middle-class authors. Lefty-baiting headteacher Katharine Birbalsingh has declared that “ gentle parenting ” advice books by middle-class writers are sabotaging families by insisting adults become friends with their children.

She’s probably got a point – most mums and dads have watched with a cocked eyebrow as a Boden-clad parent has tranquilly informed little Johnny that punching another child in the face while playing in the sandpit “might not be what they like” – but I say Birbalsingh is not going far enough. Why stop with the parenting books? Why not fillet the whole damn bookcase of toxically middle-class ideas? Visionaries such as Chairman Mao have tried it before – with, admittedly, mixed results – but this time we’ll do it right.

Past traumas processed through investigative journalism and drama; a truly moving and surprising documentary; laugh-out-loud indie comedy; and Lauren Laverne’s return

Lucky Boy (Tortoise Media)
Moorgate (Radio 4/BBC Sounds)
Thirty Eulogies (Radio 4/BBC Sounds)
Harford: An Oral History (Dan Hooper)
Lauren Laverne (Radio 6 Music/BBC Sounds)

“In that summer, it was me and her against the world. We were powerful, right?” On Tortoise Media’s new four-part podcast, Lucky Boy , Gareth (not his real name) is remembering his first love. He was 14 then, bright but a “misfit”, having a secret relationship. She was 27 and a teacher. Lucky Boy is how Gareth thought of himself at the time; nearly 40 years later, he thinks the opposite.

Although better known for his sprawling Romantic novels The Hunchback of Notre-Dame and Les Misérables , celebrated French author Victor Hugo spent much of his time drawing. A collection of about 70 of his sketches will soon be on display at the Royal Academy in London , in an exhibition bringing together caricatures, travel drawings and landscapes. Several of the drawings feature castles and ruins. “Hugo was inspired by ‘burgs’ – castles, fortresses or walled towns – that he saw when travelling along the Rhine, but he often drew fantastical castles that fuse memory and imagination,” says the exhibition’s curator Sarah Lea. “Hugo’s castle drawings range in tone from sinister and sublime to highly romantic and exquisitely detailed.”

• Astonishing Things: The Drawings of Victor Hugo is at the Royal Academy of Arts, London W1, 21 March to 29 June

After the death of the esteemed actor, writers highlight their favourite movies from a long and varied career

• ‘He let us hate him’: Gene Hackman had a rare power – he didn’t need to be liked

Almost five minutes go by in The French Connection before we get a good look at Gene Hackman. Various other operators come and go in William Friedkin’s gritty and unsettling procedural – based on a real heroin sting – before Hackman’s Detective Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle emerges from behind an ill-fitting undercover Santa Claus outfit, like a background player busting into his first lead role. It’s as fitting an entrance as ever for Hackman, leveling up after his supporting work on TV and films like Bonnie and Clyde. And he gives a performance that sets the tone for his whole career, playing the brutal and racist cop, a morally murky figure who just doesn’t sit right as the hero of the story. Many of the qualities that made Hackman so great in later villainous roles – the way he moves like a menace with a devilishly charming grin, slipping so easily from comforting to antagonizing – are in Doyle. That detective’s infamous query, repeatedly grilling suspects about picking their feet in Poughkeepsie, is as mischievously disorienting as Hackman’s onscreen presence. Radheyan Simonpillai

The producer and head of XL Recordings on a spicy YouTube series, London’s most fascinating street and the musician who’s ahead of his time

Richard Russell was born in London in 1971. He joined XL Recordings in 1991 as an A&R and took over the label several years later, attracting a slew of artists including Dizzee Rascal, MIA and Adele. His parallel career as a producer began in 1992 with rave single The Bouncer and continued in 2010 with I’m New Here , his acclaimed collaboration with Gil Scott-Heron. He has since produced albums by Bobby Womack and Damon Albarn. Russell has just released Temporary , the latest album of his collaborative project Everything Is Recorded, with features from Sampha, Florence Welch, Kamasi Washington and others.