Category Archives: Culture

Protesters target major new Nigerian museum embroiled in looted artefacts row

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Protest at Mowaa comes amid dispute over ownership of Benin bronzes looted by British colonial forces

Protesters have disrupted a preview event at a major new museum in the Nigerian city of Benin that has become embroiled in a row over the restitution of artefacts looted by British colonial forces.

The demonstrators asserted that the opening of the Museum of West African Art (Mowaa) is a violation of Benin City’s cultural heritage, which falls under the authority of its traditional ruler, the Oba of Benin, Ewuare II.

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‘I have to take ultimate responsibility’: Tim Davie’s BBC resignation statement

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Full text of director general’s note to staff and the resignation statement from head of news Deborah Turness

Tim Davie, the BBC’s director general, and the head of BBC News have resigned after a former adviser to the corporation accused it of “serious and systemic” bias in its coverage of issues including Donald Trump, Gaza and trans rights.

This afternoon Davie sent the following note to staff:

Dear all,

I wanted to let you know that I have decided to leave the BBC after 20 years. This is entirely my decision, and I remain very thankful to the Chair and Board for their unswerving and unanimous support throughout my entire tenure, including during recent days.

Dear all,

I have never been more proud of the work that you do every day. You really are the best of the best.

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Bad Bridgets podcast about crime among Irish women in US inspires film

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Margot Robbie’s company to make movie based on Northern Ireland academics’ stories of poverty and prison

It started as a trawl of dusty archives for an academic project about female Irish emigrants in Canada and the US by two history professors, a worthy but perhaps niche topic for research.

The subjects, after all, were human flotsam from Ireland’s diaspora whose existence was often barely recorded, let alone remembered.

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Groundbreaking British Museum show set to challenge samurai myths

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Exclusive: Exhibition will reveal complex reality, featuring women and artistic creations, beyond armour-clad warriors

A groundbreaking samurai exhibition that promises to challenge “everything we think we know about Japan’s warrior elite” spanning a millennium of myth and reality is to open at the British Museum next year.

Titled Samurai, the blockbuster exhibition will reveal a world beyond armour-clad warriors and epic duels, as popularised by the noble, katana-wielding heroes of Akira Kurosawa’s classic action films and PlayStation’s hit video games.

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Lee Tamahori, director of Once Were Warriors and James Bond movie Die Another Day, dies aged 75

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New Zealand film-maker became a Hollywood fixture in the 90s and 00s, including making Pierce Brosnan’s last 007 movie, before returning to his home country

Lee Tamahori, the New Zealand director of Once Were Warriors and Die Another Day, has died aged 75.

In a statement to Radio New Zealand, Tamahori’s family said he had Parkinson’s and died “peacefully at home”.

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Grammys 2026: the nominations in all the major categories

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With big numbers for Bad Bunny, Leon Thomas and more, check out the nominated artists this year

Bad Bunny – DtMF
Sabrina Carpenter – Manchild
Doechii – Anxiety
Billie Eilish – Wildflower
Lady Gaga – Abracadabra
Kendrick Lamar with SZA – Luther
Chappell Roan – The Subway
Rosé & Bruno Mars – APT.

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Kendrick Lamar leads Grammy award nominations with nine nods

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Rapper receives nominations in all top categories while Lady Gaga, Bad Bunny, Sabrina Carpenter and Leon Thomas are also major nominees

The Grammys’ love continues for Kendrick Lamar. The rapper, who took home the most trophies at the 2025 music awards with five, leads the nominees for the 2026 awards.

Lamar is up for nine awards, including album of the year (for his most recent album, GNX), best rap album, record of the year and song of the year. He faces competition for the night’s top award – album of the year – from Bad Bunny, Justin Bieber, Sabrina Carpenter, Lady Gaga, Leon Thomas, Tyler, the Creator and Clipse, Pusha T & Malice.

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Film festival in New York cancelled after China puts pressure on directors

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Participants ask for their films not to be shown at IndieChina event, which was due to launch this weekend

An independent film festival due to start in New York this weekend has been cancelled after several film-makers pulled out due to harassment from the Chinese authorities, raising concerns about transnational repression.

The inaugural IndieChina film festival was planned to take place between 8 and 15 November. But on 5 November the festival’s curator, Zhu Rikun, posted on Facebook that he had been forced to cancel 80% of the planned screenings because film-makers had pulled out.

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Rockstar Games delays Grand Theft Auto VI – again – to late 2026

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The hugely anticipated sequel was due to arrive in May of next year but has been pushed back to November 2026

Rockstar Games’s Grand Theft Auto VI, which was due to release on 26 May next year, has been delayed again – this time to the end of 2026. It has now been nearly two years since the game was announced, and more than 12 years since the release of Grand Theft Auto V.

“Grand Theft Auto VI will now release on Thursday, November 19, 2026,” reads Rockstar Games’s statement on X. “We are sorry for adding additional time to what we realize has been a long wait, but these extra months will allow us to finish the game with the level of polish you have come to expect and deserve.”

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Shirley Valentine actor Pauline Collins dies aged 85

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Family pays tribute to actor who was a ‘bright, sparky, witty presence on stage and screen’

The Shirley Valentine actor Pauline Collins has died aged 85, her family has announced.

She died peacefully, surrounded by her family, in her care home in Highgate, north London, having had Parkinson’s disease for several years, they said.

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Louvre heist a ‘deafening wake-up call’, says auditor

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Report says Paris museum prioritised ‘visible and attractive’ projects over security in run-up to robbery

The spectacular theft of an estimated €88m (£77m) of crown jewels from the Louvre last month was “a deafening wake-up call” for the “wholly inadequate pace” of security upgrades at the Paris museum, the head of France’s state auditor has said.

Presenting the report, which was completed before the dramatic heist at the world’s most-visited museum, Pierre Moscovici said the Louvre had sufficient funds for the improvements and “must now implement them without fail”.

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Garden shed of vaccine pioneer Edward Jenner added to heritage at risk register

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Hut where father of immunology trialled first smallpox vaccine among 138 additions to Historic England list

A rustic, ordinary-looking English garden hut regarded as the birthplace of immunology – revolutionising global public health and saving countless lives – has been added to the nation’s heritage at risk register.

The hut belonged to Edward Jenner (1749-1823, regarded as someone who has saved more lives than any other human. It was there that he first trialled a vaccine for smallpox in the late 18th century.

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Jennifer Lawrence says speaking about Trump would ‘add fuel to a fire that’s ripping the country apart’

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Actor who said in 2015 that a Trump presidency would be ‘the end of the world’ says celebrities make no difference to how people vote

Jennifer Lawrence has said she no longer feels it appropriate to speak out against the Trump administration, lest she exacerbate unhelpful debate and further divisions.

“I don’t really know if I should,” said Lawrence in an interview with the New York Times. “During the first Trump administration, I felt like I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off. But as we’ve learned, election after election, celebrities do not make a difference whatsoever on who people vote for.

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Horror show: North American box office records lowest monthly total since 1997

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Halloween weekend failed to make numbers jump, adding up to the weakest monthly performance – other than during the pandemic – for three decades

Box office earnings in October have crashed to levels not seen since the late 1990s, with Halloween weekend becoming the worst of the year so far.

According to a report in Variety, cinema takings for October in North America totalled $425m (£323m), the lowest figure since October 1997, when it was $385m – not counting October 2020, when North American cinemas only took $63m as moviegoing was severely affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.

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My Father’s Shadow looms over competition at British independent film awards

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Akinola Davies Jr’s Nigeria-set drama has 12 nominations, including best film and besr director

Nigeria-set drama My Father’s Shadow is the leading contender at this year’s British independent film awards (Bifas), after it scooped 12 nominations, including best British independent film, best director for Akinola Davies Jr, and best screenplay for Davies’s brother Wale. The film came out ahead of Pillion, adapted from Adam Mars-Jones’s coming-of-age relationship story, which got 10 nominations, and biopic I Swear, which got nine.

My Father’s Shadow, which stars Sope Dirisu and is Davies’s debut feature as a director, premiered at the Cannes film festival to admiring reviews. The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw described it as “a transparently personal project and a coming-of-age film in its (traumatised) way, a moving account of how, just for one day, two young boys glimpse the real life and real history of their father who has been mostly absent for much of their lives”. The film is yet to be released in the UK, but has already come out in Nigeria.

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Rome: worker trapped and one injured after part of medieval tower collapses

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Three others rescued at the Torre dei Conti, which was undergoing restoration works

A medieval tower in central Rome has partly collapsed twice during renovations, injuring one worker and trapping another.

Falling debris from the initial collapse of the Torre dei Conti, just after 11.30am (0930 GMT), close to the Roman Forum ruins, hit a 64-year-old worker, the Ansa news agency reported. He was taken to San Giovanni hospital in a critical condition although Francesco Rocca, Lazio’s regional president, said his injuries were not life threatening.

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Louvre jewel heist by petty criminals, not organised professionals, says Paris prosecutor

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Laure Beccuau said ‘upper echelons of organised crime’ unlikely to be involved as one perpetrator remains at large

The brazen daytime heist at the Louvre was carried out by petty criminals rather than professionals from the world of organised crime, the Paris prosecutor has said, describing two of the suspects as a couple with children.

The assertion comes two weeks after thieves parked a stolen truck outside the world’s most-visited museum, used a furniture lift to reach the first floor, then smashed their way into one of the museum’s most ornate rooms. Less than seven minutes later, they escaped on scooters with crown jewels worth an estimated €88m (£76m).

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Paintings by UK pioneer of abstract art to be displayed in West Country

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Large-scale William Scott works feature in exhibition that tells story of artist’s friendship with Mark Rothko

The story of how one of the UK’s great abstract painters was inspired by ordinariness – and the extraordinary meeting he had with an American artistic giant – is being told in a new exhibition in the West Country.

Three large-scale paintings by William Scott (1913 –1989) have been loaned to the Museum of Somerset in Taunton, not far from the artist’s home and studio in the countryside south of Bath.

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Veteran actor Tchéky Karyo, star of Nikita and The Missing, dies aged 72

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French-Turkish actor appeared in a string of high-profile films, as well as hit BBC series The Missing

Tchéky Karyo, who appeared in some of director Luc Besson’s biggest hits and a string of international films, died on Friday at the age of 72, his family have announced.

A statement from his wife and children sent to AFP said he had “succumbed to cancer”.

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Big belly, wavy fur and a nose for trouble: we exclusively reveal the new-look Paddington

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It’s been the biggest secret in theatre: what will the marmalade-loving, hyper-polite Peruvian look like in Paddington the Musical? As the curtain rises, we speak to the new bear’s creator, a veteran of Star Wars and PG Tips ads

Paddington stands within touching distance. His fur flutters as he turns, his neat button nose sniffs the air, and his eyes soften with a smile. For years, design details of the bear for Paddington the Musical, directed by Luke Sheppard, have been kept top secret. Now here he is, in his blue duffel coat and red hat. A quiet theatrical marvel. “What we’re doing,” says producer Sonia Friedman, “has never been done before.”

Standing around 1.2 metres (just under 4ft) tall, the bear is beautifully round, all belly and sloping shoulders. He is not an exact replica of the Paddingtons we’ve seen in illustrations or movies, but something new. His shaggy, caramel fur has a gentle wave, and his white snout is dotted with a brown nose, ideal for sniffing out trouble. Around his neck sits a label, threaded through an old piece of string, asking for someone to look after him.

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