The panel discussed:
My Life
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It's really disappointing, and to go on at such length makes it crushingly boring.
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President Bill Clinton has always had an interest in literature. A poem by Seamus Heaney hung on the Oval Office wall during his eight years in office. And the Starr Report which led to Clinton's impeachment discovered that his gifts to his young lover Monica Lewinsky included copies of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass and Nicholson Baker's novel about telephone sex: Vox.
The reported ten million dollar advance and American print-run of two million copies will pay off the lawyers' bills Clinton accumulated in office but - as has become clear in publicity interviews - he is careful on such subjects as Monica Lewinsky never to go beyond careful legal formulas.
Like his presidency, the memoir alternates lawyerly evasion with uplifting intelligence: especially in accounts of the peace processes in Ireland and the Middle East and his Arkansas childhood as the son of a widowed single mother who then married an abusive alcoholic.
But Clinton's critics claim that - though posing as an apologia and confession - the book is just yet another election campaign: for his place in history and Hillary's in the White House.
Bill Clinton's My Life is published in hardback now.
Shrek 2
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For this genre of movie, this is as perfect as it gets.
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These days there's little chance of a fairytale ending with the characters living happily ever after. If the fairytale was a hit, they need to get down to filming the sequel. The stars of Shrek - which made more money than any other animated film and won an Oscar - even had to work on their honeymoon.
In Shrek 2 - released next week - the swamp ogre goes to meet his bride Princess Fiona's parents in their hometown of Far Far Far: a place of stretch stage-coaches and obsession with physical beauty which looks like a Grimm version of Hollywood.
Shrek 2 opens 2 July around the UK.
Russian Landscapes in the age of Tolstoy
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...it glorifies the awfulness of Russian nationalism.
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A consequence of the post-Cold War friendliness with the West's former enemy has been the opening up of Moscow art collections.
A show of Russian Orthodox icons came to Britain last year and now the National Gallery is hosting an exhibition of 19th century landscape art never previously seen outside the motherland.
Because the names of the artists - including Shiskin, Nesterov and Levitan - are little-known here, the gallery has invoked a literary celebrity: calling the show Russian Landscape in the Age of Tolstoy.
Russian Landscapes in the age of Tolstoy is at the National Gallery until September.
Earthly Powers
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It is pointless, tedious...
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The novelist Anthony Burgess used to complain that - even after the success of his book A Clockwork Orange and the notorious Kubrick movie, the only people who recognised his name were those who thought he was the spy Guy Burgess.
So in 1979 he sat down to write a novel which he hoped would sell in airports and become a TV mini-series.
The book - Earthly Powers - became a bestseller and narrowly lost the 1980 Booker Prize to William Golding but, despite many attempts, has only been dramatised 25 years later and not on television.
Earthly Powers begins on Radio 4, 27 June at 3pm.
On the panel were:
Newsnight Review, BBC Two's weekly cultural round-up, follows Newsnight on Friday evenings at 22:00 GMT 23:00 UK.
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