First personLife and styleRoxy Freeman never went to school. But at the age of 22, she decided to get a formal education, forcing her to face up to the prejudices that blight her Gypsy community – and to shackle her wandering spiritThe receptionist looked at me with disdain when I walked into Suffolk College asking to enrol. Their access course for mature students didn't have any entry requirements as such, but the receptionist warned me it was an advanced, intensive course, and there seemed to be a blank space under "

Culture This article is more than 5 years old'True meaning' of Watership Down revealed ahead of TV revivalThis article is more than 5 years oldReaders thought story was cryptic allegory, but its creator was firm: ‘It’s just a story about rabbits’ It has been endlessly picked apart and analysed and described as an allegory for both communism and Christianity but the daughters of Richard Adams have revealed the true meaning of Watership Down.

Undoubtedly forbidding ... Ralph Erskine’s Byker Wall estate in Newcastle. Photograph: Alamy/IslandstockUndoubtedly forbidding ... Ralph Erskine’s Byker Wall estate in Newcastle. Photograph: Alamy/IslandstockA history of cities in 50 buildingsCitiesByker Wall: Newcastle's noble failure of an estate – a history of cities in 50 buildings, day 41Ralph Erskine’s Grade II-listed council estate, built to replace the old Byker neighbourhood, is an examplar of design and public participation – and proof that it is rarely in the interests of people to demolish their original homes

Classics cornerJack KerouacJack Kerouac's follow-up to On the Road epitomises the visionary exuberance of the Beat GenerationIn Lowell, Massachusetts, on the banks of the Merrimac river, Jack Duluoz recalls the fevered daydreams and wild imaginings of his youth. A fictional cipher for Jack Kerouac's younger self, Duluoz's childhood and adolescence are dominated by the baseball pitch overlooked by the looming Textile Institute, and games of marbles played with fanatical zeal. But Lowell's shady streets are also densely populated by ghosts: Duluoz's father and dead brother; local suicides; schoolfellows who died young.

The ObserverFictionReviewPaul Harding's second novel charts the decline of a grief-stricken father with bleakness and beautyThe ticking of the clock – and those moments when the clock stops ticking – echoed through Paul Harding's Pulitzer prize-winning debut novel Tinkers, in which the elderly George Crosby, a clock repairer, lies dying. Time is a recurring obsession in this haunting second novel too, narrated by George's grandson Charlie in the aftermath of his 13-year-old daughter Kate's untimely death: one afternoon in September, in Enon, New England, while riding her bicycle from the beach, Kate is struck and killed by a car, after which Charlie is left "