Tom Sutcliffe and his guests Gillian Slovo, Kathryn Hughes and David Benedict review the week's cultural highlights including The Chemistry of Tears.

In Peter Carey's extraordinary latest novel, The Chemistry of Tears, Catherine Gehrig, conservator at a museum, learns of the sudden death of her colleague and lover of thirteen years. As the mistress of a married man, she must struggle to keep the depth of her anguish to herself. Catherine is given a special project in a quiet annexe where she reluctantly unpacks an eerie automaton that she has been charged with bringing back to life.

The Duchess of Malfi, John Webster's great Jacobean tragedy and poetic masterpiece tells the dark and bloody story of the recently widowed Duchess as she struggles to retain strength and dignity in the face of death. Starring Eve Best.

In the film Tiny Furniture, the director cast her own mother and sister and shot it in the family apartment. It tells the story of Aura who returns home from her American Midwest liberal arts college to her artist family's New York trendy loft. She takes a job as a hostess at a restaurant and falls into relationships with two self-centred men while struggling to define herself.

The V&A's major new exhibition showcases the best of British design from the 1948 "Austerity Olympics" to the summer of 2012. Works range from the Morris Mini Minor, created in 1959, to the newly commissioned model of Zada Hadid's London Aquatics Centre for the 2012 Olympics.

Smash is an American musical drama tv series produced by Steven Spielberg. The show revolves around the creation of a new Broadway musical based on the life of Marilyn Monroe. As the production takes shape, everyone involved in it must balance his or her often chaotic personal life with the all consuming demands of a life in the theatre.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod.