These are some of my final news stories at The Independent before I went freelance at the beginning of December (since then, I have been commissioned by Esquire, am working on MYMZK and am pursuing new opportunities).

*Story off back of leaked correspondence between Leonardo owner and Dr Nicholas Penny, director of the National Gallery, ahead of the gallery's major show;

*Call of Duty 3 approved by censors (followed by The Daily Mail);

*Shane Meadows lined up for Stone Roses film (followed by The Guardian, The Sun, NME, Metro, among others)

*Did Van Gogh die in unfortunate brush with fate (first journalist in the world to report; story subsequently published by hundreds of international media);

*Child visitors plummet to major museums;

*The Wallingers that were too wacky, even for him.

Recent stories (I am just going to include here those which I wrote about first)

*Turkey demands return of its "Elgin Marble" (followed by CNN)

*Sue Tilley moves out of Soho (followed on page three, The Evening Standard)
*Abbado/Grimaud fall out over "artistic differences" (subsequently profiled in the New Yorker and splashed by NYT Arts section)

*Tate staff complain of bullying (followed by The Evening Standard)
*Ford Madox Brown piece discovered (followed by BBC, Reuters, The LA Times, The Guardian)

*JG Ballard's house for sale (followed by The Guardian, The Evening Standard & BBC)
*Poetry Society slash funding (followed by The Guardian & BBC)
*Michelangelo discovered at Oxford college (followed by Huffington Post, BBC, and then a lot of international media)
*Short story campaign (part of rolling stories followed by The Guardian)
*Venice censorship (followed by The Daily Telegraph)

Have also been invited to become a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Some key stories so far this year (listed here so I don't forget).

*Covering the Brits, Baftas and Oliviers;

*Nationwide Arts Council cuts.

*Story about Dennis Hopper's art being pulled (reported ahead of/followed by LA Times, FT, NY Daily News);

*Quotes calling for Ai Weiwei's release (quotes used by The Guardian, Channel 4, and Der Spiegel);

*Story on new choreography in ballet (followed by The Telegraph);

*Interviews with Sir Nicholas Penny; Lenny Henry and Greg Dyke.

*Story on Yuri Gagarin statue (followed by Mail; later reported by The Guardian, The Mirror, BBC);

*Nice exclusives on CS Lewis, Kew, Pertwee, Anderson & Gold; Luminaire piece from a while ago, later cropping up in The Guardian.

Been a busy first month or two as arts correspondent. I guess highlights would be:

*Jack Thorne's play at the National;

*An interview with Mat Collishaw;

*Nigerian protests forcing cancellation of a Sotheby's auction (followed by The New York Times and the BBC);

*An interview with James Rhodes;

*Coverage of protests at the Turner Prize;

*Patrick Stewart's complaints about Broadway (followed by The Daily Express)

*Behind the scenes on Peter and the Wolf at the ROH, whose director, Tony Hall, I also interviewed;

*The suspension of the Royal Opera House's move North;

*A page three on Bob Marley;

*A splash on Joanna Yeates.

So I spent last week at Arvon centre the Hurst, in Shropshire, on a short story course. I'd really recommend going on something like this if you're interested in writing; the access you get to the tutors is excellent.

You're essentially there for four days. We had four three-hour workshops, two one-on-one tutorials (with Adam Thorpe and Olive Senior) and then readings in the evenings. Di Speirs, one of Radio 4's senior fiction producers, and the person instrumental in founding the BBC's famous short story award, also came down to answer questions.

I've also just been appointed The Independent's arts reporter/correspondent (not sure on the title as yet), so I'm going to be the point of contact for arts news at the newspaper for the forseeable. It's exciting, because we're also launching a new title aimed at young/lapsed newspaper readers imminently.

Here's my review of Geoff Dyer's essays, a book I couldn't recommend highly enough.

Finished "The Interpretation of Dreams" and this book on Riker's Island which was more interesting than I had initially reckoned, as well as picking through Adam Thorpe's short stories, Ballard's short stories, and Raymond Kurzweil's "The Singularity is Near" mainly because he was name-dropped by Yannis Philippakis in this month's Q. Also enjoying Geoff Dyer's essays. The following, a Jung quotation, stood out, among others, in Dyer's piece on "Tender is the Night".

"The fact that a man who goes his own way ends in ruin means nothing...He must obey his own law, as if it were a daemon whispering to him of new and wonderful paths...The only meaningful life...is...a life that strives for the individual realisation - absolute and unconditional - of its own peculiar law...To the extent that a man is untrue to the law of his own being...he has failed to realise his life's meaning."

Wrote some things on Nick Cave, animal pyschology and a couple of historical documentaries.

Wrote a piece on some photographs accompanying "Restrepo", a forthcoming war film directed by Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger. Also pitched and wrote page three of the paper on Alasdhair Willis.

Had a couple of weeks off. Read Gary Shteyngart's "Super Sad True Love Story"; "Portnoy's Complaint", "Cloud Atlas" (jaw-dropping); a book of Iain M Banks short stories, "City and the City", Tom McCarthy's "Remainder" and Michael Kahn's "Basic Freud" (the excerpts below are from elsewhere). Wandered to Fulham library and now very much want to read this.