In the first few weeks of 2014, private security company G4S has repeatedly had to deny reports of full-scale riots at the UK’s newest prison, HMP Oakwood, near Wolverhampton. The prison has experienced…
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It’s a kind of literary miracle. Fragments of two new poems by Ancient Greek poet Sappho have been discovered, making it possible for us to be among the first people to read these texts for more than 1,000…
The death of Pete Seeger marks the end of an astonishing career. His music, political activism and teaching gave him an extraordinary influence that shows no sign of abating. Although the American folk…
“I live a Cut & Paste kind of life”. So the narrator of Nathan Filer’s The Shock of the Fall tells us. But in terms of its daring exploration of a life little understood and left in shadow, there is…
A one-off programme on History’s H2 channel and Sky News has broadcast for the first time some film footage I discovered depicting the Holocaust. This may seem unremarkable: in the digital age, smartphones…
Given the group’s sonic ownership of last summer with Get Lucky, it seems apt that Daft Punk collaborators dominated last night’s Grammy Awards. They had a total of seven wins, including Album of the Year…
The Grammys, that great annual showcase of the American popular music business, may not rank quite with the Oscars. But there is no doubt, that in the prize-giving season, this jamboree of self-congratulation…
On 25 January, people all over the world will congregate to feast upon a spicy sheep’s stomach – but not before they’ve recited a poem in its honour. The occasion is Burns Night, the poem is Robert Burns’s…
The music venue Night and Day in Manchester is threatened following complaints from residents living nearby about noise. They suggested pictures fell from walls because the bass was so loud". The venue…
Coronation Street’s Hayley Cropper killed herself before the watershed last night. The build up to this prompted the inevitable moral panic frenzy. The media’s role in the representation of suicide is…
The creative industries have not only survived, but also thrived, in the recession, according to data released by the UK Department of Culture, Media and Sport. This may come as a shock. The report details…
After months of research, excavating old graves and following one lead after another, my colleagues and I can confirm that remains we discovered are those of English king Alfred the Great or his son Edward…
The decision to award the TS Eliot poetry prize to Northern Ireland poet Sinéad Morrissey has been greeted with the usual poorly punctuated grumblings about how poetry has lost its way, together with mainly…
During a 1988 excavation on London Wall 39 human skulls were discovered. But they remained shrouded in mystery. Now though, forensic analysis of the skulls by bio-archaeoloist Rebecca Redfern, shows that…
As Britain starts four years of commemorating the centenary of the First World War, Blackadder Goes Forth, first broadcast on BBC1 in 1989, has, bizarrely, taken centre stage. To rather less fanfare than…
The third season of the BBC’s Sherlock opens with a bang and gives us Derren Brown, Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock in an action hero window smash, followed by an insouciant hair tousle and a Hollywood…
The United States was in the middle of a civil war 150 years ago and, while Abraham Lincoln had just issued the emancipation proclamation, it would still be another 18 months until freedom finally came…
On January 4, Tripoli’s historic Al Sa’eh Library, one of Lebanon’s largest, burnt down. Two-thirds of its 80,000 books and manuscripts were lost in a fire that consumed the building. This is no anomaly…
There has been a lot of hype and misinformation in the press over the last few weeks about the future of television. At the CES Electronics Showin Las Vegas, curved screens and 4K TV are being touted as…
The term “bubble” is now part of everyday conversation, particularly since the financial crisis of 2008. But bubbles are not just a problem in the world of banking. They can affect the choices you make…
Michael Gove must be off his head. In Germany any politician who tried giving professionals a history lecture would be considered a lunatic. German historians love to argue among themselves, and there…
As part of a concerted effort to disengage my brain from work over Christmas, I decided to watch the recently released DVD of The Purge, which Santa had brought me. Heavily criticised as mindless and inane…
The timing could not have been more poignant: as South African president Jacob Zuma announced to the world that Nelson Mandela, the father of his nation, had breathed his last, Mandela’s daughters, Zenani…
In the world of internet memes, 2013 was without doubt the Year of the Doge. Participants on Twitter, Tumblr and reddit created and circulated their own narrations of this Shiba’s fragmented internal monologue…
In David Foster Wallace’s epic Infinite Jest, a major conceit is a film so good it reduces any and all who see it into a quivering pulp, physically unable to stop watching, wasting away into utter uselessness…