Anne McElvoy discusses the libraries of Timbuktu, and what they teach us about literacy and book culture in Africa, with Dr Shamil Jeppie, Dr Marion Wallace, Head of African Collections at the British Library, and the novelist Aminatta Forna. Susannah Clapp delivers a first-night review of a revival of Harold Pinter’s play, Old Times. Historian Paul Kennedy delves into the story of the problem solvers of the Second War, the subject of his new book The Engineers of Victory. And Karl Sharro gives us his reflections from the top of The Shard.