Six of the Best 850

We must rebuff the calls to scrap GCSEs and A levels, says Mark Lehain, because they ensure every child gets a broad and balanced education until 16.

In the 1960s British Black TV drama was sharp, hard-hitting and streets ahead of America. Steve Rose asks what happened to it.

Gillian Darley on a Tolstoyan commune in Essex.

Backwatersman reviews Stephen Fay and David Kynaston's biography of John Arlott and E.W. Swanton. The England opener Peter Richardson emerges as a hero for his teasing of the latter. He "continued to vex him by submitting accounts of the doings of fictitious public schools to 'The Cricketer' and comically blimpish letters in praise of Swanton to 'The Daily Telegraph'."

"Before viewing Harlequin ... it’s best to set aside the old-fashioned notions of 'good' and 'bad.' They just don't apply here. I've watched the film twice now, and I still have no idea if it's a 'good' film or not. But it is flat-out crazily entertaining, and I love it." Jim Donahue watches the film directed by David Hemmings and starring Robert Powell.

Caroline from Flickering Lamps shows us the turbulent history of Clerkenwell's Spa Fields