Gary Shteyngart's life story is more colourful than most fiction, and he draws on it again for his third, and best, satirical novel
These days, an American writer, like the politicians he votes for, needs a narrative – not a story to tell, but one he has lived, one that makes him saleable. McCain purveyed the tale of his travails as a prisoner of war, Obama the saga of his multicultural family. Gary Shteyngart, too, has what he calls a "special story". It is the source of his quirky uniqueness...

Forty years ago, Miles Davis rewrote the jazz rulebook with his album Bitches Brew – but he never would have made it without the inspiration of the amazing Betty Mabry, as she now reveals in a rare interview
As the incendiary year of 1968 dawned, Miles Dewey Davis found himself in a most unusual situation: he was no longer hip. The trumpeter had reigned as the crown prince of jazz for nearly two decades, his music mutating subtly through hard bop to the mesmeric...

Two albums, two Mercury Prize nominations and she's still only 20… Laura Marling on her new-found confidence, the folk resurgence and competing with her boyfriend Marcus Mumford
Laura Marling's set at Glastonbury this summer must have been the most serene festival performance of the year. Chatting wryly between song after spine-tinglingly perfect song, she was so composed and quietly assured that, at certain points, you could sense a collective swoon.
When I later walked past her outside...

From shimmering water sprays to a walk in the clouds, this year's biennale is a delight, thanks to the inspired curatorship of Kazuyo Sejima
The Venice Architecture Biennale is the world's greatest festival of the art, a grand global expo of beauty, pretension and silliness. Its three-day vernissage is a mighty schmoozefest of architectural clans, eased by a diet of bellinis and dinners on rooftop terraces. The vernissage,...

As one of her short stories appears as a stand-alone book, the Irish writer Claire Keegan discusses her work with Sean O'Hagan
It was Hemingway who perhaps came closest to defining the art and craft of the great short story. "If a writer knows about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows," he wrote. "The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-ninth of it being above the water."
Reading Claire Keegan's sublime short story "Foster", which...

She was best-known for discovering Kate Moss – and the backlash against 'heroin chic' that followed – but Corinne Day's lens had a far wider angle
In the many obituary notices and tributes that marked her premature death at 48 from a brain tumour, Corinne Day was described repeatedly as the fashion photographer who discovered Kate Moss. For Day, one senses, that would have been the cruellest irony of all. Even in death, she...

(Hyperion)
The quality of any cathedral choir is governed by the standard of its trebles; they come and go so rapidly as the years pass and their voices break that to maintain a consistently high level is every choirmaster's headache. Wells is currently enjoying a superb top line, rewardingly displayed in this collection of Jonathan Dove's radiant choral works, including a first recording of his sparkling Missa Brevis, commissioned last...

(Linn Records)
Scotland had some very beautiful medieval music preserved in a St Andrews manuscript alongside French repertory. One piece nestles here among plainchant and alluring modern vocal items by composers ranging from true Scots such as James MacMillan (his superb Os mutorum) and James McCarthy (the hypnotic The Stars in Their Courses) to Joanne Metcalf, Peter McGarr and John Tavener. All pick up on the distinctive resonance...

The professor of classics at the University of Cambridge gives her verdict on Tony Blair's memoir
The best thing about the Blair book was the stuff about boozing. I had always imagined that New Labour was a "Perrier-and-rocket-salad" party, and that they dispelled the stress of government with 30 minutes on the treadmill. Here was Blair confessing to a stiff G and T and a half bottle of wine (aren't GPs always told to...

The veteran Labour politician and president of the Stop the War Coalition gives his verdict on Tony Blair's memoir
A Journey tells the story of Tony Blair's remarkable career – 10 years at No 10. Like any memoir, it highlights the story and illustrates it with comments about some of the people with whom he worked. But what is really significant about his political life was that he set up a new political party, New Labour. This transformed the Labour party...