Last weekend it was the 50th anniversary of an important event in postwar Welsh history. In early February 1963 the Welsh Language Society – Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg – protested for the first time about the right of Welsh speakers to live their lives in Welsh. At Pont Trefechan in Aberystwyth 500 people gathered on Saturday to mark the event and the same number came back on Sunday to Y Bont (The Bridge), a commemorative outdoor play devised by the Welsh-language National Theatre, Theatr Genedlaethol Cymru.

For a man who lives in an agreeable region of France, Jonathan Meades grew strangely passionate in the course of this fascinating excursion around Essex. The thuggish-looking narrator travelled by small, functional Toyota rather than Magical Mystery Tour-style charabanc, though the latter would have been perfectly apt for tales of Cockneys seeking escape in the county described by one sneering commentator as "the dustbin of London".

Although he has been recording since 2005, it was his 2011 album, Felt, which set Nils Frahm apart from the ever-swelling tide of modern classical minimalists. It was so intimate, so subtle, it felt almost like it shouldn’t be shared. The follow up has that same sense of peeking in on some private act, but it feels less uncomfortably illicit. On Screws, Frahm’s piano is naked, with nothing intruding.

In 1991, the Basque performance artist Esther Ferrar wrote a letter to modern music’s inventive genius, John Cage, on the future of anarchism.

Things have come to a pretty pass when the old is a breath of fresh air and the new just old hat, but the Frieze Masters art fair in Regent's Park, which closes this weekend, is just that. New sister to Frieze London, which features art since 2000, Frieze Masters is about the best of what came before. And boy is that good.

"There used to be among families...a position, a certain...call it 'parade'." So stammered Benedict Cumberbatch's rigidly principled, increasingly broken Christopher Tietjens at the climax of last week's penultimate Parade's End, echoing his own line from the series' first episode as he struggled to justify his fidelity to adulterous wife Sylvia (Rebecca Hall).

Television schedules seem not to matter much any more, since we can now watch on repeat more or less any time we choose. But it still seems strange that the BBC are airing their new five-part period drama, which is part-funded by the HBO network to the tune of £12 million, on a Friday evening in the middle of August – even though it’s turned out to be ideal weather for staying in. And Parade’s End ticks all the right boxes, too – all bar one, perhaps: it’s lovely to look at, it features a top-drawer British cast, and there’s the screenplay by Tom Stoppard.

As an art school the Bauhaus has a reputation for being the cradle of modernism, famous for establishing an alliance between art and industry which produced enduring design classics such as Marcel Breuer’s tubular steel chairs, Josef Albers’ silver and glass fruit bowl and Marianne Brandt’s elegant globe lamps. But that is only part of the story.

The V&A has played a blinder. This extraordinary, exciting and unexpected exhibition provides endless trips down memory lane for many and will be a revelation for others. Ignore the clunky title, moving us from the postwar Olympics of 1948 to Olympic year 2012, and just go.

The Lord count was perhaps surprisingly high in the first instalment of Melvyn Bragg on Class and Culture. Among the talking heads I counted there was only one who wasn’t a life peer or a “proper” hereditary one, and there was only one who was neither Lord, Lady or Dame (though she did have a CBE).