Teju Cole

My book of the year was Alice Oswald’s Memorial, a translation and reworking of the death-scenes in the Iliad. Stunning and vivid, poetry of a very high order. I also deeply admired Binyavanga Wainaina’s One Day I Will Write About This Place, a memoir of an African boyhood. I was very much impressed by the de Kooning restrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, and returned to it several times.

In Spring 2012, I’m looking forward to MoMA’s show of Atget photographs. As with most years, most of my reading will be old books, but I hope for a few good new ones too.

• Teju Cole’s Open City was published in August.

Norman Lebrecht

My cultural highlight of 2011? So many Mahler concerts, it’s impossible to decide, but Riccardo Chailly’s account of the Eighth Symphony in Leipzig had a lucidity I have never experienced before. Suddenly I knew why Mahler needed five separate choruses, each adding a different shade of colour to the massive spectrum. And, far from sounding like a symphony of two halves, this performance had a surreal unity. I think you can get it now on DVD.

Next year, I can’t wait for January when I’m doing a week of Mahler talks in Los Angeles, to coincide with Gustavo Dudamel’s symphonic cycle at Walt Disney Hall. Yes, I do have a life beyond Mahler, though sometimes it gets back-benched for an awfully long time.

• Norman Lebrecht’s Why Mahler? is available in paperback.

Louise Doughty

My cultural highlight of 2011 is the Northern Ballet’s production of Cleopatra, which I saw when it came to Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London.  As well as being exquisitely danced, it was quite the sexiest thing I have ever seen on stage.

As far as 2012 is concerned, I’m looking forward to the Dickens bicentenary celebrations and have been lucky enough to be asked to Berlin for a conference about what Dickens would be writing today, which has been a nice excuse to re-read my favourites. It will be a great antidote to Olympic overload.

• Louise Doughty’s Whatever You Love is available now in paperback.

Deborah Bull

I’m privileged, as part of my job, to be part of many cultural events: picking a single highlight isn’t easy. I could choose the Terry Jones/Anne Dudley opera, The Doctor’s Tale, commissioned by ROH2 for the Linbury, or Arthur Pita’s dance version of The Metamorphosis for ROH2, which exploited the exceptional talent of Edward Watson, among others, to bring Gregor Samsa’s tale to the stage. But I think I will go for Punchdrunk’s New York show, Sleep No More, inspired by Shakespeare’s Macbeth and plunging the audience into an immersive experience akin to existing in someone else’s nightmare.

For next year, my highlight will have to be the amazing programme of events that make up the London 2012 Festival. Most of my energy will be focussed on The Olympic Journey, which will bring the story of the Games to the Royal Opera House for two weeks from 27 July 2012.

• Deborah Bull’s The Everyday Dancer was published in October.

Harry Hill

I really enjoyed Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris. I’ve been a fan of Woody’s films for a long time and while I always get something out of them, this latest one seemed to me to be more complete than his recent outings. It features Owen Wilson in the ‘Woody’ role and has some great one-liners and a neat overarching concept. He shot Paris beautifully. Of course what all us Woody fans want really is to see Woody back in front of the camera, but there doesn’t seem much chance of that anytime soon.

I am looking forward to the David Shrigley exhibition in February 2012 at the Hayward Gallery. Shriggers has been something of an outsider for a while, gradually insinuating himself into the popular culture, so this exhibition is overdue. His work manages to be funny and profound at the same time, which is difficult to pull off. Although his work is popular he’s managed to keep a low profile, so it will be interesting to see how he copes with the spotlight being swung onto his face.

• Harry Hill’s Bumper Book of Bloopers is on sale now. Fun for all the family!

Chris Ewan

In the UK, at least, Megan Abbott has been one of crime fiction’s best-kept secrets of the past few years. So in 2011 it was thrilling to see Abbott’s writing receive the wider attention it so deserves with the publication of her mesmerising The End of Everything. This deft, nuanced tale of a thirteen-year-old girl searching for her missing best friend, and becoming intoxicated by her role at the epicentre of the suburban quakes and tremors that follow, is told with heartbreaking intensity and a twitchy, beguiling prose. The devilish final page tugs at my conscience even now.

Despite the creative involvement of Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, I admit I was dubious when I first heard that the BBC were planning a contemporary Sherlock Holmes. Now, I find that I can’t wait for the second series of Sherlock to be aired in early 2012. Sure, Benedict Cumberbatch makes a brilliant Holmes and Martin Freeman a very engaging Watson, the production values are terrific, and the contemporary updates are handled in an innovative way, but what really sets this drama apart are the scripts. Playful, inventive, devious. Will there really only be three more episodes?

• Faber publishes Chris Ewan’s Safe House in August 2012.

Lucy Caldwell

My favourite novels of 2011 were Belinda McKeon’s Solace and Richard Beard’s Lazarus is Dead. Reading Solace made me think of McGahern – it’s that good. Elegant, assured, unflinching; there are no narrative tricks, no pyrotechnics, just a steady layering which in the end is heartbreaking. Lazarus is Dead, on the other hand, is unlike anything I’ve ever read. It’s a strange and startling and incredibly thought-provoking account of the life and deaths of the shady, eponymous biblical character. Part thriller, part meditation – it needs its own genre to describe it – the last few pages are gut-wrenching. Leontia Flynn published her third collection, Profit and Loss, this autumn. She is one of my favourite poets, and she just gets better and better. Michael Longley’s A Hundred Doors was a real treat, too. The most arresting performance I saw was Dance Umbrella’s The Difference Engine (Duke/Duke/Palermo/Svendsen), which I caught at the Gate in Notting Hill. I’m not a natural fan of contemporary dance – I like my theatre with words – but this eerie, dystopian love-story was extraordinary.

I think The Difference Engine may be revived, too, for another UK tour in 2012  – I’ll definitely be seeing that, again. It’s the Architecture Biennale in Venice next summer and I’m trying to finagle a way of getting there … And, like everyone else, I’m counting down the seconds until the release of Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies, the second part of what will be her Wolf Hall trilogy.

• Lucy Caldwell’s The Meeting Point was published in February (paperback due March 2012).

Andrew O’Hagan

The sharpest novel published this year was The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt. Like Flannery O’Connor shot through with the Coen brothers, it was a tonic dash of the cowboy surreal and I loved it.

My favourite album was undoubtedly Helping Hands by The Butcher Boy. Tender tunes, quizzical guitars, and precise, thoughtful lyrics: everything I’ve always loved in a pop song.

At the Neue Gallery in New York I saw a series of heads by Franz Messerschmidt that I’ll never forget. Cast in bronze, they show, to an amazing degree, how moral character can show itself on a face. A lovely day out for a novelist, or for anybody.

And speaking of novelists: my recommendation for 2012 is Capital by John Lanchester. This may be his best book yet, and that’s saying something, because he had never written a bad one. It goes to the heart of the times, but also to its characters’ hearts, and people are already excited to read it.

• Andrew O’Hagan’s The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, and of his friend Marilyn Monroe, is available in paperback.

Barney Hoskyns

I’ve loved a lot of musical things in ’11 (Scorsese’s George Harrison doc; albums by Feist and Waits and Malkmus; the Paul Nelson biography/anthology) but the most powerful cultural experience was belatedly watching Andrei Zvyagintsev’s astonishing 2007 film The Banishment. No idea how I missed the follow-up to the Russian’s remarkable The Return, but BBC4 showed it in April and I lay on the sofa in a state of suspended dream animation watching its dark drama unfold. Very slow, minimal dialogue, supremely unaffected performances, snatches of Arvo Part on the soundtrack – and the shadow of tragedy hanging over every frame.

For 2012, given that the best football is an art form – or at least an expression of the purest geometry – I will plump for the European Championships. Footie-as-art naturally discounts England’s involvement – especially when our sole talent (W. Roonaldo) is ruled out of the group stage because he also happens to be a stroppy berk – but recompense comes in the form of Messrs. Xavi, Iniesta, Ribery, Ronaldo, Sneijder, Robben, Van Persie, Lahm, Schweinsteiger, Gourcouff, Modric et al. And it can’t be any worse than last year’s World Cup …

• Barney Hoskyns’ new book on Led Zeppelin – Trampled Under Foot – will be published in September.

Jane Harris

The novel which had the most profound effect on me this year was Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth, a moving and cleverly-plotted narrative about an 18th century slave-ship mutiny. It’s a mystery to me why Unsworth doesn’t have a higher profile in our literary landscape and this book has to be his greatest work. I enjoyed Sacred Hunger so much that I’m now re-reading his The Songs of the Kings, an old favourite.

My cultural highlights would usually include a film or two but there wasn’t really anything I saw at the cinema in 2011 that would be worthy of inclusion in a ‘best of’ list. Television proved to be more rewarding. We went retro with a box-set of Freaks and Geeks, an American teen comedy-drama, created by Paul Feig and Judd Apatow. I was prepared to loathe this show but ended up loving it. Here’s a clip:

I also became obsessed with The Trip, a BAFTA-winning improvised comedy-drama in which Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon – playing versions of themselves – undertake a gourmet restaurant tour of northern England. Here’s one of my favourite clips:

• Jane Harris’s Gillespie and I is published in paperback in January.

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