My highlight
Writers reflect on their current cultural interests
My highlight: the Samuel Pepys: Plague, Fire, Revolution exhibition by Michael Prodger
The Pepys exhibition at the National Maritime Museum offers a cabinet of curiosities that reflects his extraordinary fecundity
Mark Haddon: a celebration of Allan Ahlberg
Quentin Blake, Roddy Doyle and Chris Riddell were among writers and illustrators who creatively saluted the venerable children’s author Ahlberg
My highlight: Cosmonauts at the Science Museum by Francis Spufford
This beautiful display captures the Soviet space programme as a place for licensed dreaming, and features space relics never before allowed out of Russia
My highlight: The Go-Between by Jenny Turner
Less arty than the 1971 film, the new BBC version lets the tensions within LP Hartley’s novel emerge: land, money, war and revolution as well as sex
My highlight: Manga now by Timon Screech
Unlike its equivalents in the west, manga in Japan is taken seriously as art. The new exhibition at the British Museum showcases the images of Tetsuya Chiba, Yukinobu Hoshino and Hikaru Nakamura
My highlight: Lady Chatterley’s Lover
DH Lawrence’s gamekeeper has cleaned up his act and Sir Clifford is a dish in the BBC’s new morally complex adaptation
My highlight: Life in Squares
One corset is removed while another is thrown out the window … there is much to fit in and much to look forward to with the BBC’s upcoming Bloomsbury drama
Inside Out by Emma Brockes
With its jokes about abstract thought, this Pixar/Disney journey inside an 11-year-old’s mind is as funny as it is inventive
My highlight: Mad Men by Bee Wilson
The Eames chairs and hour-glass dresses are a visual treat, but it’s really all about Jon Hamm’s performance as a man sickened by his womanising and in thrall to his own pretty lies
My highlight: Eric Ravilious by Michael Prodger
An exhibition of Ravilious’ watercolours at the Dulwich Picture Gallery shows how his pastoral vision of an English Neverland remains powerfully evocative
My highlight: Suite Française by Caroline Moorehead
Kristin Scott Thomas and Michelle Williams bring Irène Némirovsky’s superb novel about occupied France movingly to life in Saul Dibb’s excellent film
My Highlight: Poldark
Starring a brooding Aidan Turner, this big budget TV adaptation of Winston Mawdsley Graham’s Cornish novels has crashing surf, dramatic cliffs and glorious landscapes
My highlight: Leonora Carrington
Ahead of the Tate Liverpool exhibition, Chloe Aridjis is inspired by Carrington’s oracular animal hybrids, her great natural and mythical worlds – and her fierce authenticity
My highlight: The Casual Vacancy
The adaptation of JK Rowling’s novel may have a softened ending and Farrow & Ball gloss, but it remains true to her realist vision and allegiance to the young and socially disadvantaged
My highlight: Marlene Dumas
Colm Tóibín finds stark beauty in the South African-born painter’s dreamlike images
My highlight: Goya
Why 2015 is the year finally to decide whether Goya was high-minded or simply fascinated by evil. By James Hall
My highlight: Mapp and Lucia by Nina Stibbe
I was worried when I heard there was to be a new TV adaptation of EF Benson’s wonderful novels of interwar snobbery, but Miranda Richardson and Anna Chancellor are a credit to the great man. By Nina Stibbe
My highlight: Serial
Sarah Koenig’s addictive series about a 1999 murder conviction has raised the bar for both podcasts and old-fashioned investigative reporting