Third in line to share their summer reading selection with theartsdesk is Colin Currie (b 1976), the leading percussionist of his generation. A driving force behind new percussion repertoire for more than a decade, in 2000 Currie was awarded the Royal Philharmonic Society Young Artist Award for his inspirational role in contemporary music and is in the unique position of being the only instrumentalist to enjoy close collaborative relationships with many of the leading composers of today, notably Rautavaara, Steve Reich and Elliott Carter. 

This warm-hearted production of E Nesbit’s most famous novel premiered to glowing reviews at its site-specific venue last summer.

Next in theartsdesk’s series of recommended summer reads is musician Gary Kemp, guitarist with Spandau Ballet, five working-class boys from north London who emerged from a surfeit of floppy fringes and pantaloons to become one of the most successful pop acts of the swaggering, vainglorious Eighties. Kemp wrote 23 singles for the band including massive hits such as "Gold", "True" and "Only When You Leave", which still crop up repeatedly on TV and film tracks.

Sarah Waters’s highly praised novels have marched from the page to the screen with regimental regularity and no apparent sacrifice in quality. Tipping the Velvet and Fingersmith, with their big Victorian brushstrokes, were built for television no less than Dickens is. With The Night Watch, adapted last night, her subject was still the love that dare not speak its name. But two things were different. This time Waters’s sweeping saga was compressed into a single film.

Thanks to her evergreen bestseller Behind the Scenes at the Museum, Kate Atkinson can call on an army of fans to buy her work whenever it appears in print. Its debut on screen is, perhaps, another matter. Will they buy the BBC’s rendition of Case Histories? Those who have not had the pleasure of reading it are less advantageously placed to grumble about hideous revisions, outrageous changes and all manner of infidelities. But even an Atkinson newbie might find it a bit rum that Scotland seems to be entirely populated by people with English accents.

Watching bookaholic punters tramping down windswept country lanes in hiking boots, anoraks and rucksacks instantly alerts you to the singular quality of the Hay Festival, though it's surprising that nobody has grasped the glaring opportunity to set up a tent selling Alfred Wainwright's fell-walking guides and Kendal Mint Cake. But where else can you find such a high density of starry names and media taste-makers in a soggy field on the Welsh border?

Anyone turning on BBC Four last night expecting to watch the first episode of Room at the Top will, at least in part, have got what they were expecting: lashings of sex. Only one problem. It wasn't in Room at the Top. Owing to a late-blooming rights dispute, the BBC decided on the day of broadcast not to go ahead with their new adaptation of John Braine's 1957 novel. On the principle that if you would have liked that, then you'll like this, they had a rummage in the archives and produced a rabbit: their version of Fanny Hill, first broadcast in 2008.

As preparation for this new account of Women in Love, I conscientiously picked up a copy of the novel for the first time since studying it at university. Big mistake. By half an hour into the drama I was in a state of some discombobulation. His adaptation may be called Women in Love but William Ivory has dipped back into The Rainbow, the novel’s preceding companion volume. At some point he seems to have lobbed both books into a cement mixer.

A chorus of "Hooray! No CGI!" has greeted Kevin Macdonald's new film version of Rosemary Sutcliff's popular novel, The Eagle of the Ninth. Not for him a Gladiator-style digital Rome, or Troy-like computer-generated navies stretching away into infinity.