Campaigners say ‘seismic shift’ follows years of pressure to sever ties with oil and gas firm
The London Science Museum has ended its decades-long partnership with the oil and gas company BP in what has been described as a “seismic shift” for the museum.
The Science Museum Group academy, which was established in 2018 to provide training and resources, announced on Friday that it would be ending its partnership with BP. In a statement, the director and chief executive of the Science Museum Group, Sir Ian Blatchford, said the partnership had “drawn to a close at the end of the current contract term”.
The British Museum’s landmark cultural exchange is a symbol of post-Brexit rapprochement between Britain and France
“Harold Rex interfectus est”: King Harold is killed. As every British schoolchild knows, the Bayeux tapestry depicts a turning point in the history of these islands: defeat at the Battle of Hastings in 1066, which would lead to the ascent of William the Conqueror to the English throne. Its return to the UK for the first time in nearly 1,000 years is being hailed as a hugely historic moment in its own right. The loan of the tapestry (technically an embroidery of wool on linen) to the British Museum in exchange for UK treasures from Sutton Hoo is the ultimate manifestation of soft power – a 70-metre symbol of post-Brexit Anglo-French rapprochement in comic-strip form.
Ticket sales for the exhibition, which opens on 10 September, were the biggest in a single day in the museum’s history, with online queues of 80,000. Radio 4 is devoting a day of special broadcasts to mark the arrival of the tapestry, including a new drama with verse from the poet laureate Simon Armitage. The museum’s videos explaining this tale of ambition, friendship, betrayal and revenge are fittingly narrated by Traitors presenter Claudia Winkleman. Norman-mania is here.
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Police hunt two suspects after historic 200-carat piece is snatched from Austrian museum during opening hours
Austrian police are hunting two men alleged to have stolen a 200-carat platinum necklace encrusted with 673 diamonds that was on loan to a museum in Vienna and once belonged to Egyptian royalty.
Authorities in the capital released pictures of the suspects captured by security cameras during the heist at the Museum of Applied Arts (MAK), amid a rash of spectacular smash-and-grab thefts from European cultural institutions.
Police hunt two suspects after historic 200-carat piece is snatched from Austrian museum during opening hours
Austrian police are hunting two men alleged to have stolen a 200-carat platinum necklace encrusted with 673 diamonds that was on loan to a museum in Vienna and once belonged to Egyptian royalty.
Authorities in the capital released pictures of the suspects captured by security cameras during the heist at the Museum of Applied Arts (MAK), amid a rash of spectacular smash-and-grab thefts from European cultural institutions.
Jake says his parents ‘never stopped helping’ his brother Nick, who has pleaded not guilty to murdering both of them at their Los Angeles home
Jake Reiner has given his first interview since the killing of his parents, the film-maker Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, saying: “I will never understand why this happened.”
Reiner, who directed films including The Princess Bride, This Is Spinal Tap and Stand By Me, was found dead alongside Singer Reiner from apparent stab wounds in their home in Los Angeles in December.
In this week’s newsletter: resolutely for grownups but proudly immature, the late-night channel has influenced an entire genre of comedy. But it still retains its cult status
Twenty five years ago this coming week, a strange block of programming suddenly began airing in the wee small hours on the US cable channel Cartoon Network. Anyone half-watching with the sound off might have mistaken the shows as a continuation of the toons airing in the daytime: bright, big-eyed affairs full of energy and slapstick comedy. Those paying attention, though, would have noticed something was off: old-fashioned Hanna-Barbera superheroes had been recast as attorneys or talkshow hosts; a crew of talking fast-food items, supposedly a hero squad called the Aqua Teen Hunger Force, just seemed to be bickering with each other and watching TV rather than fighting crime; and the whole mood of the programmes, with their halting, babbled dialogue, juvenile humour and janky animation, seemed not quite right. The name of the block was odd too: Adult Swim.
Piggybacking on the adult animation boom of the 90s – The Simpsons, South Park et al. – Adult Swim steered things off in to bizarre and unsettling new territory. If anything, it’s only gotten weirder in the quarter of a century since it started. Close to 100 shows have aired in this insomnia-friendly night-time block (though today it arguably operates as its own independent channel within a channel), almost all of them strange enough to make you feel like you might be asleep after all and having a particularly psychedelic dream. It has platformed demon-fighting death metal bands, redneck squids, preposterously dark claymation parodies of Rankin/Bass, and a crime-fighting, gun-toting backside – as well as real-life figures with faces as boggle-eyed and elasticated as their cartoon counterparts. It has remained a defiant corner of freakery in a homogenised TV landscape.
Before The Witcher 4 arrives in 2028, CD Projekt Red is returning us to the world of The Witcher 3 for one last foray. Looks like wind’s still howlin’
The game that graced us with Bathtub Geralt, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, arrived more than a decade ago. So it was a touch surprising this summer when developers CD Projekt Red announced a new expansion to the venerable adventure, titled Songs of the Past, for next year. It will release alongside a full remaster of the original game, which will be free for anyone who bought it back in 2015. (The studio is also working on a sequel, The Witcher 4, but that’s not due until 2028.)
As it turns out, this is all possible thanks to a partnership with Fool’s Theory, a studio founded by CD Projekt Red veterans, which took on the brunt of the development work. “We’ve had this story in a drawer for many years,” explains Marcin Blacha, VP story director at CD Projekt Red. “Of course, we moved on to Cyberpunk 2077 and now The Witcher 4, as well as our other projects. But because we knew The Witcher 4 would take time, we saw a gap in our release calendar where Songs of the Past could go. Thankfully, we were able to find the right partner to help execute it.”
The star has long been French cinema’s favourite tousle-haired Adonis, which makes his latest performance – as a schlubby, stay-at-home dad – all the more surprising. ‘I appreciate people laughing at me,’ he says
‘Even though I’ve been working in film for over 20 years, I still have this desire to look beautiful on screen,” says Louis Garrel, on a video call from his bed inside a boat off the coast of Corsica. The French film star is lying on his stomach, occasionally kicking up his bare legs, ruffling his curls and running the nail of his thumb over his moustache. I think the person he sees on the laptop screen in front of him is me, but I am pretty certain he is flirting with his own reflection.
The attraction between the Paris-born 43-year-old and the camera tends to be reciprocal. Long of limb, tousled of hair and chiselled of nose, Garrel has spent a career on screen as French cinema’s favourite Adonis – the man film-makers turn to when they need an erotic wrecking ball to smash up bourgeois twosomes and turn them into quivering menages a trois.
And then in 2024, we got Fede Álvarez’s Alien: Romulus, in which actual xenomorphs chase actual human beings down actual corridors for the clearly defined purposes of either killing them or putting smaller xenomorphs inside them. Better still, a year later we got Noah Hawley’s Alien: Earth, which reminded us that giant, murderous space insects are in fact less awful than tech trillionaires.
Rich harmonies mix with synth, harp and aquatic grace on the intriguing first single from the New York songwriter’s debut album
From New York, USA Recommended if you like Jessica Pratt, Minnie Riperton, Cocteau Twins Up next Debut LPFollow the Light released via Jagjaguwar on 16 October
In Robert Silverberg’s 1973 sci-fi anthology New Dimensions 3, there’s a story by author Terry Carr called They Live on Levels. The simplest outline of this tale is that thanks to a technological breakthrough, humans are able to exist and communicate through different planes of existence. Through musical styles and generational layers, the spectral folk of New York-based songwriter June McDoom expresses this very notion in stunning fashion.
Poetry with wonder and wit; a heartwarming tale for horse lovers; a portal to the future; a brilliant YA wartime romance and more
Small Monster, Big Monster by Allan Sanders, Phaidon, £7.95 Refrigerator is EMPTY. Monster is FULL (of pizza!). An eye-wateringly bright board book, featuring splendidly zany, toddler-pleasing pairs of opposites.
The Flying Machine of Dreams by Kate Wakeling, illustrated by Viviane Schwarz, Otter-Barry, £12.99 A delectable picture-book collaboration that perfectly distils the wonder of the everyday, from the textures of a leaf to a squishy-cushioned den. Wakeling’s irresistible poetry is richly heightened by Schwarz’s sweet, strange illustrations.
A heartbroken woman becomes fixated on a famous writer in this witty, touching follow-up to Sorrow and Bliss
The protagonist of Meg Mason’s new book, the follow-up to the 2020 tragicomedy Sorrow and Bliss, is an invisible woman. She might well be standing there but you won’t notice her. She’s a techie at literary festivals – the person who shuffles up to a famous writer a few minutes before their event and apologetically slides a microphone cable down their shirt while they’re making small talk with the chair or accepting a bottle of room-temperature mineral water from an anxious publicist.
No man is a hero to his valet, and no writer is a hero to the technical staff lurking in the wings of a venue. Mason’s opening pages present a teasing but not quite libellous series of cameos from real writers: George Saunders deciding at an inconsiderately late stage to insist on swapping his headset for a lapel mic; Ann Patchett being frosty with a fan; Mick Herron accidentally stepping on someone’s foot and not apologising.
The art portfolio platform Cara, designed for creators who don’t want their work used to train AI, has been under assault by trolls seizing and publishing its data.
Plus, views from the Cotswolds of Harry and Meghan’s return, and the embarrassing anachronism that is Ali G
Is there anything sadder than the end of summer? As schools go back next week and parents rely on the boosting effect of a return to routine, we look around for other ways to soften the blow. A few things this year that might make it easier: the need for rain ensures that the advent of autumn is slightly less depressing than usual; people with attic conversions in which you could bake a muffin over the summer will be able to use them again; and if you happen to be a woman of 50 or thereabouts, the fresher weather is ... a relief.
Their raucous pop music has made Katseye the biggest girl band in two decades. Can they weather toxic fandom, critical pans and a dwindling member count?
Before screenings of their new documentary, the members of Katseye appear in a video message to thank fans for their support. Their followers, Eyekons, have played a critical role in their rise to stardom, so it makes sense that Katseye: Wild Hearts, released in global theaters this month, takes a beat to shout out to them. Perhaps more than many other big music groups today, the group’s rise has depended on their relationship with their devotees who ensure that few corners of the world are safe from Katseye mania.
Katseye’s multinational members – Daniela, Lara, Manon, Megan, Sophia and Yoonchae – were selected through a combination of fan votes and judge scores on the 2023 YouTube reality competition The Debut: Dream Academy. The joint project between the American record label Geffen Records and Korean entertainment company Hybe aimed to create a global girl group, with hopefuls participating in a rigorous bootcamp to test their singing and dancing skills. The following year, Netflix’s docu-series Pop Star Academy: Katseye – which documented the group’s nascent era, behind-the-scenes drama and all – catapulted them to a new level of visibility.
(ALTER) The Grammy winner unites former clients including Lamar and Ravyn Lenae for a playful, dazzling voyage through the guitar’s diversity, from alt-rock to Afrobeat
On this long-awaited debut, Grammy-winning hip-hop producer Dahi steps out from the booth and into the spotlight. He’s best known for transforming a dreamy Beach House sample into Kendrick Lamar’s hit Money Trees, alongside chameleonic production work for SZA, Madonna, Drake and many more. Now that Dahi’s got the mic, what does he want to say?
Blending the brittle 90s British rock he loved as a California teen with the west African grooves his father played in the house, Black Boy (Alternative) celebrates the guitar as a transcendent tool that spans genres and continents. No other album this year will boast such starry guest features – Dahi calls up former clients Lamar, Childish Gambino, Vince Staples and Ravyn Lenae alongside experimentalists such as Moses Sumney, Baby Rose and Fousheé – but it’s testament to the strength of his vision that these distinct voices come together like a bedded-in, playful house band. All trust, no ego.
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