A few years ago, novelist, film director and screenwriter Rebecca Miller and her children were rowing across the lake in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, when she spotted a crowd of Chasidic families enjoying a day out in the sunshine.

"We did this for ourselves,” says the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra’s legendary music director for life, Zubin Mehta, sitting on the stage of the newly renovated concert hall of the IPO. “But we [also] did it for the public.

T he latest play to win a Pulitzer Prize for drama will be remembered for a long time by those who see it at west London’s Bush Theatre, where performances begin today. And Jewish or Muslim audience members are unlikely to forget it. Disgraced is written by Ayad Akhtar, a 42-year-old American actor, screenwriter, novelist and now dramatist.

Harold Pinter’s vision has come true. Up and down the land, institutions set up to care for the vulnerable have become callous places of torment. As a series of disturbing reports have shown, in a number of places, residents are at best routinely treated without respect and, at worst, abused. In that sense, real life has overtaken this prescient play.

Radio presenter Alan Dein opens our conversation by asking: “So where are you and what are you doing?” I wonder if I should remind him that it is me who should be asking the questions. But then Dein, who fronts Radio 4’s Don’t Log Off, does it so nicely that I’m tempted to let him continue.

It had been a while since I had last tasted a slice of boiled gefilte fish. So where better to renew acquaintance with the Shabbat delicacy than one of its lands of origin, Poland? But I was not eating a Shabbat meal.

At first glance, Gil Shani’s 2006 painting Untitled appears completely abstract, a black expanse with white shapes scattered across it in a seemingly random fashion. But, after a while, your eyes begin to identify the shapes — camels passing through a rocky, desert landscape.

Completing the 26.2-mile marathon distance is a gruelling task for any participant. To prepare properly requires a lifestyle overhaul, particularly with regard to diet and exercise. But the London Marathon’s oldest competitor, 88-year-old Paul Freedman, takes it all in his accomplished stride.

For the last 15 years of his life, Maureen Lipman’s father Maurice struggled with short-term memory loss and the actress was “afraid it was going to happen to me”. It was the inspiration for If Memory Serves Me Right, a prime time BBC documentary broadcast on Thursday night in which she explored issues of memory and memory loss.