Country & Town House

Belinda Bamber writes: "Clear a weekend for binge-reading The Whalebone Theatre by Joanna Quinn, about three free-spirited children who organise the toffs, drunks and servants of their Dorset country pile into staging a play in a beached whale's skeleton - before World War II overturns their lives. Destined to be a literary classic, it's a dead cert for screen adaptation.