From girlish flirt to monstrous sociopath, the former PM has been variously interpreted on screen

"I don't really see her as a villain," says Meryl Streep. "People are driven by what they think is right [and] certainty is just so attractive in people … It's so nice not to have to listen … Unfortunately, it leads to fanaticism." Streep, I should point out, is not talking about her forthcoming performance as Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady, Phyllida Lloyd's portrait of the former PM in the run-up to the Falklands war.

Independent booksellers and authors say the million-book giveaway will damage trade and writers' incomes

Three weeks ahead of the inaugural World Book Night book-giving event on 5 March, a row has broken out over whether the event will damage independent booksellers and harm authors.

Clarke's account of a vast alien object hurtling towards our sun is a stone-cold classic

The friendly rivalry between the two giants of science fiction, Arthur C Clarke and Isaac Asimov, was legendary among genre fans. It reached such a peak that some time in the late 1960s the two even agreed to a tongue-in-cheek agreement about their respective statuses, The Clarke-Asimov Treaty. They vowed that Clarke would always refer to Asimov as the best science writer and Asimov would call Clarke the best science fiction writer.

Crispin Glover made it big in Back to the Future. Since then, he's had another life making weird films

There are three Crispin Glovers in Back to the Future. The middle-aged wreck living in 1985. The sweetly inept 17-year-old living in 1955. And the sporty, novelist superdad living in a new version of 1985, a beneficiary of his son's history-changing adventures in the space-time continuum.