I can remember exactly where I was when the news came over the radio in December 1980 that John Lennon had been shot dead outside his home in New York. The term paper I was writing about TS Eliot didn’t seem so important any more – it was my generation’s day the music died. Yesterday he would have turned 80 and it’s sad to think how many more songs he might have written. To mark the occasion we take a look at the dynamics of his most prolific songwriting partnership with fellow Beatle, Paul McCartney.

The news, this week, that the producers of the latest James Bond film No Time to Die have delayed the movie’s release until next April, at the earliest, has sent shockwaves through the cinema industry. Cineworld has announced the closure of its UK and US theatres, with the loss of thousands of jobs thanks to the absence of the blockbusters that attract millions of customers. Something similar happened to European cinema after the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, which in part enabled the rise of Hollywood to fill the vacuum. Things appear to have come full circle.

We’ve also been reading about how reading habits have changed during the pandemic, why South America is filled with mammals of North American origin but not vice versa, and anticipating how 20 billion people could be living well by 2050 by using as much electricity as the world did 60 years ago.

From our colleagues around the world, we’ve taken a look at the history of street photography in South Africa, considered how well Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch has held up over 50 years and examined the treatments that the US president claims have cured him of COVID-19. We’ve also celebrated the achievements of this year’s Nobel Laureates.

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