Edmund White first won international acclaim for his autobiographical account of a young man coming to terms with homosexuality in A Boy's Own Story. He returned to the theme in The Beautiful Room Is Empty, and in a new novel, The Farewell
Symphony. Edmund White talks to Richard Coles about his fiction and the changing sexual climate which it charts. Charles Nicholl investigates the lost years of the young
Arthur Rimbaud. Why did the poet turn his back on Paris and fame in favour of a life wandering in East Africa? Plus a first-night review of Lorca's Donna Rosita , directed by Phyllida Lloyd. Producer Abigail Appleton