Maev Kennedy

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DIY insulation and cow bones: Oxford college renovation reveals what life was like as a 17th-century student

The conservation of St John’s College has uncovered hidden paintings, underfloor fire escapes and an intriguing signature

Spectacular Lumiere art festival lights up UK city of Durham

The latest edition of the popular event includes work by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and Ai Weiwei

Model restoration: Holbein painting of Tudor merchant returned to original glory—including sharper cheekbones

The newly conserved portrait of Derich Born will star in the Queen's Gallery show on the northern Renaissance artist

Bookspreview

From bonnets to ball gowns: inside Jane Austen's well-ordered closet

The author’s voluminous letters to her sister Cassandra reveal her fashion tastes and thrifty skills

Five generations of Brueghels are brought together for the first time

New show will examine the political and economic conditions that shaped the family’s fortunes

East Sussex institution hails the pioneering queer couple who changed textiles

The Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft is displaying an exhibition that pays homage to the unsung influence and secret history of Hilary Bourne and Barbara Allen

'These journeys should be remembered': Victorian stone benches for migrant workers are given listed status

Travellers' Rest stones were installed between Liverpool and Manchester for travel-weary Irish labourers

Riddle of the Iron Age warrior buried with a mirror and sword is solved

A new scientific method has been used by archaeologists to determine the sex of the skeletal remains found on the Isles of Scilly

Leighton House: the celebrated Victorian artist’s jewel-box home has been opened up

The sumptuous home and studio of painter Frederic Leighton has been made more welcoming with a £9.6m redevelopment

In partnership withArt Fund Museum of the Year 2023

British wartime control tower to become holiday home after £3.1m restoration

Conservation charity Landmark Trust plans to transform derelict building into unique four-bedroom house, due to open in 2025

Booksreview

The invented histories of the Isle of Avalon

An entertaining study of the seductive legends of England’s past, from the eighth century to the present day

Diaries of the UK's first female professional astronomer acquired by Bath's Herschel Museum

The revealing handwritten memoirs of Caroline Herschel, the first woman to receive payment from King George III for her interstellar discoveries, has been acquired by the museum that was once her home

Britain's oldest piece of carved wood discovered in layer of peat

The large piece of oak is around 6,000 years old–2,000 years older than Stonehenge

'Justice is my claim': library discovers new poem attributed to Queen Caroline, who was barred from her husband's coronation in 1821

Caroline of Brunswick, "an injured princess" famously acquitted of treasonous adultery, was refused admission to George IV's crowning in Westminster Abbey

London's National Gallery gets papal approval for its Saint Francis show

Exhibits include a cloth said to have been worn by the saint, masterpieces by Botticelli and Zurbarán, and a new Richard Long commission

Riddle of ancient Egypt’s ‘impossible’ sculpture is finally solved—in Scotland

Pioneering research by a National Museums of Scotland curator finds statue reflects a village of eminent tomb-makers

The curtain rises: London's Museum of Shakespeare opens in 2024 on the site of a long-hidden theatre

The new venue, in Shoreditch, will reveal the archaeological remains of the Curtain Playhouse for the first time

Back after 2,000 years: the Roman gateway to Britain

The Richborough fort in Kent, the base for the Roman invasion of Britain in 43AD, reopens to the public

Booksreview

Scurrilous, rude and joyful: the secret stories of tampered pennies told in new publication

Essays explore the myriad ways that coins have been inscribed with messages of protest, love and more

Island hopping: exhibition finds connections between ancient cultures of the Mediterranean

Show at Cambridge's Fitzwilliam Museum of more than 200 artefacts from Sardinia, Cyprus and Crete considers the connections between lost island civilisations

Britain's oldest prayer beads—buried more than 1,000 years ago—to be displayed in new museum on remote island

It is one of several artefacts making their first public appearance at Lindisfarne Priory

Booksreview

For richer, for poorer: domestic life in 18th-century Ireland examined in new book

Scholarly essays examine how people lived, from poor tenant farmers to their whist-playing landlords

Conservation of Spanish Armada invasion maps reveals red ink details were added hundreds of years later

Analysis of 16th-century, hand-drawn maps finds that the reds pigments were only available from the late 19th century

London operating theatre—the oldest in Europe—goes under the knife for major restoration

Victorian hospital will re-create the original skylight that aided innovative treatment of “working and deserving” women

Gainsborough’s new home: museum dedicated to artist reopens in 'sweet' English village

The newly restored galleries will also exhibit loan shows and house collections by Suffolk’s own Cedric Morris and John Constable

Top-shelf secrets lie behind the Victorian respectability of newly restored Sambourne House

House in London's Kensington includes hundreds of commercial artist Linley Sambourne’s illustrations and cartoons—and (not on view) his pornographic photographs

British Museum’s cracking tale of ancient Egyptian code, scholarly rivalry, sex and a magic bath

A new exhibition based around the Rosetta Stone marks 200 years since hieroglyphs were deciphered

Eight exhibitions to see during London's Frieze Week

From Cezanne's love of Provence at Tate Modern to cracking the Ancient Egyptian code at the British Museum

London's Wellcome Collection returns remains of death camp victim to Denmark

Research carried out in 2019 helped identify the remains as Preben Holger Larsen, a 26-year-old artist and member of the Danish resistance

Booksreview

How England's Civil War laid waste to the country's grandest private house

Book tells tale of how Oliver Cromwell wiped Basing House—which provided shelter to the famous classical architect Inigo Jones—off the map