LONDON - Edmund de Waal is sitting on the floor next to the piano in the “Austrian Cultural Forum” looking up at his father Victor. The old man thanks his son for helping publish the novel of Edmund’s grandmother. “The Exiles Return” is a largely autobiographical account of her own visit to Vienna in the Fifties. A poet, Elisabeth de Waal was exiled after the “Anschluss”, when her family was thrown out of Austria. Victor and Edmund de Waal are both visibly moved that Elisabeth’s book has finally got published - 75 years after the “Anschluss”.

On March 12th 1938, German troops crossed the border into Austria. On March 13th, Austria’s integration into Nazi Germany was proclaimed. “Much to the pleasure of many Austrians”, as Elisabeth Kögler, director of the Austrian Cultural Forum said in her speech. Edmund de Waal wanted to arrange the presentation of his grandmother’s book on precisely this date. Although he is Professor of Ceramics at Westminister University, the author of “The Hare With The Amber Eyes” is really a historian.

LONDON - And there they sat, next to each other in the dock, an empty chair between them in the courtroom. One of Britain's leading economists and her politician ex-husband. In the late afternoon of March 11 the judge sentenced both of them to eight months in prison: him for asking her to take his speeding points in 2003 and her for agreeing to do so.

What a disgrace. Not only for the former couple, who made their marriage break-up such a public spectacle. Let’s not even discuss Chris Huhne, who ran off with his press advisor a.k.a. “bisexual mistress” in 2010. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2-289890/Vicky-Pryce-trial-Even-Chris-Huhne-gave-stepdaughter-away-Greek-wedding-begun-fateful-affair.html).

Robert Schindel  "Der Kalte"

Vienna. In the lobby of Vienna's Akademietheater I run into the writer Doron Rabinovici, who says to me: "Hello, Sissy!" I have not read Robert Schindel's new novel yet so I don't know that I appear as a - tiny - character in his new book "Der Kalte", which will be presented here tonight. I look at my exboyfriend questioningly and he smiles: "I am your Boaz."

London. Did Hilary Mantel insult Kate Middleton on purpose? The famous author said about the professional princess in a speech at the British Museum at the beginning of February: “I saw Kate becoming a jointed doll on which certain rags are hung. In those days she was a shop-window mannequin, with no personality of her own, entirely defined by what she wore. These days she is a mother-to-be, and draped in another set of threadbare attributions. Once she gets over being sick, the press will find that she is radiant. They will find that this young woman’s life until now was nothing, her only point and purpose being to give birth.”

Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth II

London. Queen Elizabeth II in a private chat with David Cameron? I would love to be a fly on the wall when the seasoned monarch and the freshman prime minister gossip! Now I can be - by watching “The Audience”, a new play in previews in London’s West End.

“How’s the baby?”, Cameron asks and the Queen replies: “Which baby?”

Boris Akunin, Russia’s most successful author of detective novels

and prominent leader of the opposition, thinks the revolution could come any moment.

Profil: You were one of the leaders of the Russian street protests last winter. Isn’t this a strange role for an author of detective novels, whose fictive detective Erast Fandorin is scared of revolution?

Akunin: It’s true, I am afraid of a revolution. In Russia revolutions turn bloody quickly. The Revolution of 1917 was a disaster. It happened because the regime did not cope with their task to balance out inequality. Zar Nicholas II. was the absolute ruler and he didn’t want to share power.

Profil: Can we compare 1917 with today?

Sara Khan does not want to leave the ideological battle of modern Islam to the extremists.

Sara Khan, 32, was born and raised in the UK to Pakistani parents. She studied pharmacy in Manchester and lives with her family in London. Since 2009, Khan runs "Inspire", a human rights group for Muslim women in London.

In the West, they are seen as radical chic symbol of the spirit of resistance against the arbitrary rule of Vladimir Putin. In her native Russia beat them against primarily disgust and contempt: a visit to Pussy Riot - and at the scene of her most famous appearance.

I can hear the explosions of the rockets. We also see the smoke when we look out the window. There is no other place to go, there is no safe place in Gaza. So we stay at my uncle's house and pray. We are used to it. During the last war in the winter 2008/2009 the Israelis even bombed a UNRWA school. Until then, we thought we were safe in the buildings of the UN or in schools.

My uncle's house is in Sabra, west of Gaza City in the Gaza Strip. There's no shelter, so we all stay together in one room downstairs. We are about 20 people here. Uncle and aunt, their children, some are already married and have children. At night nobody sleeps, everyone is so scared.

23 year old Yifat Schwartz studies media sciences at Sapir College in southern Israel. She fled from rocket attacks from the Gazastrip to Jerusalem. But the rockets followed her. On Friday a rocket landed in the vicinity of Jerusalem.

We were in a lecture when the leader of the military wing of Hamas was killed in the Gaza Strip. All phones were going off, some girls rushed off immediately and said to the teacher: "Excuse me, but we live far away, we have to go before it starts." Some of us stayed and studied more. After a while we heard three bombs crash and screams from outside and everyone panicked. I went outside and saw students weeping. "This is war!" someone shouted, "we have killed a really important leader, they will fight back," I started to tremble. After five minutes, the college was empty. I stood 20 minutes in traffic with my car.