No true ‘city of culture’ should dishonour the bold ideals of its postwar rebirth

Plans for the centre of Coventry claim to offer a sense of place, but ignore its pioneering mid-century reconstruction

Coventry is UK City of Culture 2021, a title that focuses attention on its contribution to the cultural life of the nation: 1980s two-tone music, the legend of Lady Godiva, and its role in the development of the bicycle and car industries. And, high on this list, the fact that it was the pre-eminent example of reconstruction after wartime bombing.

Among the most devastated cities, Coventry was also one of the most determined and thoughtful in its reconstruction. This was partly expressed by its new cathedral, which brought together leading art and architecture, and connected movingly with the ruins of its predecessor. It was also expressed by the city centre, rebuilt as a series of human-scaled, pedestrian-friendly precincts. Here, too, the idea was for art and architecture to work together.

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Battle for Brixton’s soul as billionaire Texan DJ plans 20-storey tower block

Residents vow to stop Taylor McWilliams’s scheme to develop a site that looms over the famous Electric Avenue street market

The outcome of the fight may help shape London’s future skyline. In one corner is a Texan millionaire DJ and property developer who has put forward plans for a 20-storey office block in Brixton, next to a conservation area and the district’s famous Electric Avenue.

Taylor McWilliams’s property company Hondo, which owns most of Brixton market, claims the proposal will “deliver” 2,000 jobs in the area and generate £2.8m every year for the local economy.

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Blueprint for Biden? How a struggling Irish town gambled on its links to JFK

New Ross reinvented itself as a shrine to the Kennedy clan. Can towns linked to Biden, the most Irish American president since JFK, do the same?

After its factories died and its port withered, New Ross, a town perched by the River Barrow in south-east Ireland, decided in the 1990s to tap a unique asset: John F Kennedy.

The US president’s great-grandfather had sailed from the quays of New Ross to America during the 1840s famine, leaving behind a modest homestead that JFK twice visited, including a few months before his assassination in 1963. Like many Americans, not least the current US president-elect, Joe Biden, Kennedy was proud of his Irish connections and keen to re-emphasise the links.

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Saunas to sourdough: Unesco updates culture heritage list

Thirty-five entries from around the world added to 2020 list of national traditions

Sauna culture in Finland, sourdough making in Malta, Budima dancing in Zambia and a grass mowing competition in Bosnia and Herzegovina have been added to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation’s prestigious list of intangible cultural heritage.

The entries were among the 35 from around the world added to the list for 2020, and also included the tradition of playing the hunting horn, a status awarded jointly to Italy, France, Belgium and Luxembourg, as well as the art of glass bead making.

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Fit for a king: true glory of 1,000-year-old cross buried in Scottish field is revealed at last

Part of the Galloway Hoard, found in 2014, the piece is so spectacular it may have belonged to a monarch

A spectacular Anglo-Saxon silver cross has emerged from beneath 1,000 years of encrusted dirt following painstaking conservation. Such is its quality that whoever commissioned this treasure may have been a high-standing cleric or even a king.

It was a sorry-looking object when first unearthed in 2014 from a ploughed field in western Scotland as part of the Galloway Hoard, the richest collection of rare and unique Viking-age objects ever found in Britain or Ireland, acquired by the National Museums Scotland (NMS) in 2017.

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George Clooney: Why we owe our domestic bliss to … Boris Johnson

Row over Parthenon marbles deflected attention from secret courtship with wife Amal, star reveals

George Clooney will not be sending Boris Johnson a Christmas card, but he may send a thank-you note to No 10 – along with a comb, he told the Observer this weekend.

The Hollywood film star and director has recognised he owes part of his current domestic contentment and job satisfaction to a strange run-in he had with the prime minister early in 2014, while Clooney was secretly courting his future wife, Amal.

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Remarkable story of Madagascar’s last queen emerges from Surrey attic

Auctioneer pieces together poignant tale of Ranavalona III from satin court dress and box of mementos

It began with a fabulous 19th-century dress and a box of jumbled photographs cleared out of a Guildford attic before a move to the country. It has resulted in being able to tell the true, poignant story of Ranavalona III, the last queen of Madagascar.

Ranavalona’s remarkable life of can be revealed thanks to the auction this week of personal effects unearthed by a descendent of Clara Herbert, who worked for the Madagascan royal family from the 1890s to the 1920s.

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Nazi art dispute goes to US supreme court in landmark case

Heirs of Jewish art dealers bring case over Guelph Treasure that defence lawyers say could open floodgates

A 12-year wrangle over a rare collection of medieval ecclesiastical art sold by Jewish art dealers to the Nazis in 1935 will arrive in front of the highest court in the US on Monday, in a landmark case defence lawyers say could open the floodgates for restitution battles from all over the world to be fought via the US.

The supreme court will hear oral arguments on whether the dealers’ heirs can sue in US courts to retrieve the church reliquaries, known as the Guelph Treasure or Welfenschatz, from Germany.

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Tunnel protesters sing and drum their way into Stonehenge

Police and officials maintain presence at mass trespass after bypass approved

More than 100 protesters have staged a trespass at Stonehenge to raise concerns over plans for a two-mile tunnel underneath the world heritage site.

Last month the transport secretary, Grant Shapps, approved the £1.7bn project, which will include eight miles of extended dual carriageway along the A303 in Wiltshire.

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Ruins with a view: plan to turn Scottish castles into enchanting hotels

SNP hopes to emulate Spain’s lucrative paradores in a drive to boost jobs, tourism and heritage preservation

Just outside Stonehaven in Aberdeenshire, on the side of a steep cliff overlooking the North Sea, sits Dunnottar castle. Once a medieval fortress, the picturesque ruins are open to the public for days out but have not boasted overnight visitors since the likes of Mary Queen of Scots and her son James VI in the 16th century. Now, under new proposals to be debated at the Scottish National party conference next weekend, Dunnottar could become one of a number of Scottish castles to be transformed into high-end but affordable hotels.

The plan is based on the model of Spain’s paradores, government-run historically significant buildings such as churches, castles and stately homes, often in areas underserved by tourism. They have existed in Spain since 1928 and include iconic sites such as Parador de Santiago de Compostela, which began life in 1499 as a hospital for pilgrims travelling to Santiago and is considered to be the oldest hotel in the world. Today, Spain has nearly 100 paradores, including fortresses, convents, monasteries and even a former prison and asylum. In 2019, they generated a turnover of €261m (£230m) for the country’s economy.

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Scents of history: study hopes to recreate smells of old Europe

Researchers plan library of scents from plague repellents to early tobacco

From the pungent scent of a cigar to the gentle fragrance of roses, smells can transport us to days gone by. Now researchers are hoping to harness the pongs of the past to do just that.

Scientists, historians and experts in artificial intelligence across the UK and Europe have announced they are teaming up for a €2.8m project labelled “Odeuropa” to identify and even recreate the aromas that would have assailed noses between the 16th and early 20th centuries.

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New museum in Nigeria raises hopes of resolution to Benin bronzes dispute

Artefacts held by British Museum and other western institutions were looted by British forces in 1897

A new museum designed by Sir David Adjaye is to be built following the most extensive archaeological excavation ever undertaken in Benin City, Nigeria, raising hopes of a resolution to one of the world’s most controversial debates over looted museum artefacts.

The kingdom of Benin, in what is now southern Nigeria and not to be confused with the modern-day country of Benin, was one of the most important and powerful pre-colonial states of west Africa.

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‘We have lost a limb’: Azu Nwagbogu, the visionary curator bringing African art home

From helping photographers capture the Nigerian protests to exhibiting during a pandemic, the director of LagosPhoto festival has had his work cut out. Now he wants to fight ‘afro-pessimism’ and the posturing around Black Lives Matter

When I first spoke to Azu Nwagbogu, the recent protests against police brutality in his native Nigeria had just entered their second week. The curator was upbeat, describing them as “an incredible awakening”. A week later, when we made contact again, he sounded more sombre, but no less defiant, following the fatal police shootings of at least 12 protesters at the Lekki toll gate in Lagos, the main gathering point for the daily demonstrations.

“This protest is not about ‘the poor masses’,” he tells me. “My sister, who is a medical doctor and a consultant anaesthetist, was active in the protests. Everyone who isn’t in government has had enough. The genie has been let out of the bottle and it won’t go back in without the wishes of the people being fulfilled.”

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Salud! Barcelona’s tiny local bodegas saved for posterity

Protection move widely welcomed, but many traditional bars are struggling to pay their rents, especially under lockdown

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Barcelona council has come to the rescue of some of the city’s most emblematic and best-loved bars by adding them to the list of protected sites and buildings. However, thanks to Covid-19 restrictions, you won’t be able to get a drink in any of them for at least the next few weeks.

The city has added 11 bodegas to the list of 220 shops that are considered part of the city’s cultural heritage. The move has been widely welcomed, though it comes too late to save many small businesses, from toy and book shops to grocery and furniture stores, that were part of the fabric and essence of the city but were forced out by soaring rents. In most cases they have been replaced by chain stores.

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A selfie set in stone: hidden portrait by cheeky mason found in Spain 900 years on

A British art historian’s painstaking study of the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela uncovered a medieval prank

He is a medieval in-joke, a male figure carved in the early 12th century for one of the world’s greatest cathedrals, but no one has known of his existence until now. The figure has gone unnoticed by millions of worshippers who have made the long pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, north-western Spain over the centuries. He has looked down on them from the top of one of the many pillars that soar upwards, each decorated with carved foliage, among which he is concealed.

Now he has been discovered by a British art scholar who believes that he was actually never meant to be seen because he is a self-portrait of a stonemason who worked on the cathedral in the 12th century.

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Historic Book of Lismore returning to Ireland after centuries in British hands

Manuscript including lives of the Irish saints and a translation of Marco Polo was captured during a siege of Kilbrittain Castle in the 1640s

A 15th-century medieval manuscript, one of the “great books of Ireland”, is returning home almost 400 years after it was captured in a siege.

The Book of Lismore, which has been donated to University College Cork by the trustees of the Chatsworth Settlement, was compiled for Fínghin Mac Carthaigh, the Lord of Carbery from 1478 to 1505. It consists of 198 large vellum folios containing some of medieval Irish literature’s greatest masterpieces, including the lives of Irish saints, the only surviving Irish translation of the travels of Marco Polo, and the adventures of the hero Fionn mac Cumhaill, or Finn MacCool.

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Auction for Jerusalem museum’s treasures postponed at last minute

Sotheby’s in London had been due to sell more than 200 items from cash-strapped museum

Among the hundreds of precious items at Jerusalem’s Museum for Islamic Art is an ostentatious helmet that may have belonged to an Ottoman sultan, a page from a nearly millennium-old Qur’an, and a 13th-century Mamluk glass bowl.

While no doubt treasured, these artefacts can no longer be considered priceless. In a controversial Sotheby’s auction previously set to take place in London on Tuesday, the bowl was estimated at £60,000-£80,000 and the helmet and Qur’an leaf at £200,000-£300,000 each.

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National Trust to cut 1,300 jobs as a result of Covid-19 crisis

More than 500 compulsory redundancies as charity aims for annual savings of £100m

Almost 1,300 jobs are to be lost at the National Trust as a result of the coronavirus crisis, but the charity said it had more than halved the number of compulsory redundancies it expected to make.

A union has described the job losses as “devastating” for people affected but also called the plan “a reasonable way to move forward”.

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Malta may demand return of fossil given to Prince George by David Attenborough

Attenborough gave seven-year-old a giant shark tooth found on a family holiday

From the world-famous Koh-i-noor diamond to the Rosetta Stone, British royals have long been gifted rare objects that campaigners want repatriated to their rightful lands.

Prince George, it seems, is the latest in the line of fire, after being given a giant prehistoric shark tooth by the environmentalist and national treasure Sir David Attenborough, found on a family holiday to Malta more than 50 years ago.

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From the archive: Stonehenge, it’s place in British prehistory – 16 September 1924

16 September 1924 People wrongly believe that this majestic group of ruins was the Westminster Abbey of the Druids in Britain

The belief that Stonehenge, in common with other megalithic remains in the British Isles — menhirs, dolmens, and circles, — is druidical, and that the majestic group of ruins on Salisbury Plain was the Westminster Abbey of the Druids in Britain, is widely held, and especially by the non-scientific public. It has found expression in many of the older Ordnance maps, in which the term druidical is applied to groups of prehistoric remains which are now known to belong to the Neolithic or Bronze Age. This error will doubtless be erased in future editions.

It has also led within recent years to the formation of a sect at Clapham who assume that they are the heirs of the Druids, and as such claim the right to bury the ashes of their dead at Stonehenge, which they view as the Mecca of their faith. From their own account it appears that they have already buried the ashes of some of their members and the bodies of some of their children within the precincts. Whatever they do in the future, we look to the Board of Works to prevent further desecration of the noblest pre-historic monument in Europe, or any interference with the exploration now being carried on by the Society of Antiquaries and the Wiltshire Archeological Society.

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