‘Who was going to carry Elvis’s drugs and guns?’ How Colonel Tom Parker always looked out for the King

For decades, Presley’s manager has been vilified as a money-grabbing huckster. But compelling new evidence suggests the colonel was actually devoted to the star

Diana McVeagh obituary

Biographer of Gerald Finzi and Edward Elgar who was on the editorial board of the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians

Nick Cave fans swarm charity bookshop in UK after musician donates thousands of books

‘It’s an incredibly varied donation. He clearly held on to his books, some of them are quite old,’ says bookshop worker

The Guide #200: Get Out, Breaking Bad and the pop culture that defined the 21st century so far

In this week’s newsletter: To celebrate our 200th edition, we look back at the films, shows, albums and more that mattered most over the last 25 years

‘That’s where I found my family’: dancefloor devotees on hedonistic moves and healing grooves

A new season at London’s Southbank Centre is inspired by Emma Warren’s book Dance Your Way Home, about the potency of communal movement. She and other artists involved explain why the dancefloor is their happy place

Bless Me Father by Kevin Rowland review – the Dexys Midnight Runners frontman tells all

A picaresque story of massive success and deep despair that Rowland narrates with an impressive lack of self-pity

Michael Morpurgo to recite Vivaldi-inspired poetry at inaugural Cornwall festival

Author wants to take arts to ‘middle of wonderful nowhere’ in far south-west, often missed by people heading for coast

From Madonna to New Order and Oasis, one man’s odyssey to make an ‘atlas of album cover maps’

Damien Saunder set out to survey the cartographic influence on album sleeve design. Four years and 400-plus records later, he’s created the coffee table book music fans and map lovers never knew they needed

Street-Level Superstar: A Year With Lawrence by Will Hodgkinson audiobook review – indie pop’s ultimate underdog

This warm, funny account of a mercurial talent gone to waste teems with love for its subject

Under Milk Wood invites us to laugh at ourselves – I wanted my music to do the same

Dylan Thomas’s evocative radio play has been adapted into films, a ballet, even a jazz suite. From its drunkards and nosey-parkers, to its ghosts and dreamers, Ninfea Crutwell-Reade’s new reimagining connects it back to its origins

Simon Majaro obituary

Other lives: Management consultant, author and patron of chamber music

‘Youths everywhere were spitting over tinny beats playing off a Nokia’: great grime photographer Simon Wheatley

He was young and broke when he became grime’s first documentarian. Then his book Don’t Call Me Urban captured the energy of the grittier first wave – and an expanded edition is finally here

‘No one is immune to grief’: the team turning A Single Man into a sexy, grimy, heartbreaking ballet

Musician John Grant was blown away by Christopher Isherwood’s 1964 novel, finding deep resonances in its tale of gay love and loss. Now, he’s put songs to choreographer Jonathan Watkins’s new dance adaptation

Butt-naked Milton and a spot of fellatio: why William Blake became a queer icon

How did an ancient poet and painter who died in obscurity come to obsess everyone from Oscar Wilde to David Hockney, Robert Mapplethorpe, Derek Jarman and David Bowie? The writer of a new book explains his glorious allure

Freddie Mercury had secret daughter, new biography claims

According to Love, Freddie, Queen frontman had close relationship with child conceived accidentally in 1976