In this issue we celebrate the relationship between Literature and Film, two worlds that increasingly seem to overlap and intermingle in all areas of life. This week, for example, one of us has just finished reading a novel about filmmakers (Iain Sinclair's Landors Tower), while the other has started a book which was recently televised (Zadie Smith's White Teeth). But then once you start looking, references to film are everywhere in books today, just as the cinemas and television channels are full of adaptations from texts. New adaptations of both Doctor Zhivago and Daniel Deronda start on UK television channels this weekend.

Similarly in the classroom: teachers will show classes two different film versions of Romeo and Juliet, first Zefferelli's 1968 version and then Baz Luhrmann's 1996 Romeo + Juliet, before they start to read the text. And at work too we have been planning next year's Oxford Conference on the theme of Reading Screens: from text to film, television and new media. The issues, and practicalities, of using film and new media in the literature and language classroom have never been more relevant.

So the decision here at the British Council to merge our two small departments of Literature and Film into one new, larger entity of Film and Literature Department (FLD), is really exciting. While most of our work will continue as before, we are also planning a number of new joint projects. There will be more news about these and other initiatives for 2003 and beyond in the next issue.

In this winter issue we look at what it is like for film-makers to work with writers, and for writers to have their texts turned into films. We have an interview with Harold Pinter talking about the adaptation of his play The Caretaker for the screen; and we have a filmmaker, John Hardwick, talking about the art of making short films. While full-length feature films can be compared to plays, or indeed novels, short films are more like short stories or poems: In the same way that poetry can bend language and suggest (rather than declare) meaning, short films are able to explore the vocabulary of cinema and emphasise mood over narrative structure. We also look at what is happening in the classroom. Alan Pulverness talks about the relationship between books and the screen, what he calls two ways of telling, and Claudia Ferradas Moi suggests some ideas for the classroom of the future. We also have some teaching tips from Gerry McIntosh using Irvine Welsh's own adaptation of his stories for the film The Acid House.

Again we have Valentine Cunningham's wonderful roundup of Fiction 2001, which starts with a celebration of the life and work of W. G. Sebald, who was tragically killed last year. An Indian journalist tells us what she found most interesting at Provocations, our Bookcase at the Edinburgh Festival this year: for Gowri Ramnarayan the highlight was meeting Alastair Reid, translator of Pablo Neruda and Jorge Luis Borges. Plus our usual round up of news, books and information.