'I wrote The Cage to understand my brother's addiction'

By: SGK ADVERTISING ADDA on April 29, 2026 / comment : 0 BBC News, news

Tony Schumacher's new BBC One drama set in a Liverpool casino stars Sheridan Smith and Michael Socha.

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Chair linked to Ann Boleyn on display at Hever Castle

By: SGK ADVERTISING ADDA on April 28, 2026 / comment : 0

A 16th century chair that may have been made for Anne Boleyn when she was lady-in-waiting to Queen Claude of France is going on public display for the first time at Hever Castle where Anne lived as a child.

The chair was made in the Loire Valley, a center of Late Gothic French Renaissance furniture and art, between 1510 and 1520 when Anne Boleyn was at the French court. It was spotted by Paul Fitzsimmons of Devon-based Marhamchurch Antiques at an auction in New York in 2022. Fitzsimmons is a Tudor and English oak furniture expert who in 2019 identified a gilded wood falcon as a heraldic badge of Anne Boleyn’s removed from Hampton Court Palace after her execution.

The distinctive linenfold carving on the back of the chair is what caught his eye. The walnut backpanel features two nude putti holding a shield with the initials AB tied together by a knotted, tasseled rope known as a cordelière. The putti stand on the tails of dolphins that curve away from each other symmetrically. Their tails are banded together and a Tudor rose rises from the meeting point. The bloom’s placement is significant as the flower is in the center of the seat back where the sitter’s heart would be. Above the shield are “listener” and “talker” figures, motifs found on French ceremonial seats symbolizing the exchange and witnessing of important words.

These bas-reliefs are rife with symbolism. Dolphins are symbols of the French throne (“Dauphin,” the title for heir to the throne, is the French word for dolphin). The binding of the dolphin tails and the Tudor rose suggests a marriage bond between English and French throne. The AB monogram of Anne Boleyn entwined with a cordelière, symbol of spiritual devotion beloved by Queen Claude of France and her redoubtable mother twice Queen of France, Anne of Brittany, convey her position as a link between the two courts, probably specifically for her role as interpreter at the lavish banquet held at the fortress of the Bastille on December 22, 1518, celebrating the Treaty of Eternal Peace between France, England, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire and the Papal States sealed by the betrothal of the two-year-old Princess Mary Tudor to the 10-month-old Dauphin, Francis.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg on the chair’s background. Fitzsimmons engaged Philadelphia-based historian Sandra Vasoli to investigate the chair’s symbolism. Read her fascinating, meticulous initial research on her website and follow her social media accounts for future updates.

Capturing a Queen: The Image of Anne Boleyn exhibit runs at Hever Castle through January 2, 2027. The chair will be on display alongside the gilded falcon, another of Anne’s heraldic emblems — a carved wooden leopard’s head — painted portraits and ceremonial objects from her reign as Queen.

* This article was originally published here

Noah Kahan was crowned a superstar. It messed with his head

By: SGK ADVERTISING ADDA on April 28, 2026 / comment : 0 BBC News, news

The US singer became a festival headliner after his third album, triggering a crisis of confidence.

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Rare Roman calibration plate found in Czech Republic

By: SGK ADVERTISING ADDA on April 27, 2026 / comment : 0

A rare Roman metalworking tool discovered in the Czech Republic may shed new light on how Roman armor was made.

Experts consider a well-preserved calibration plate intended for stretching and thinning metal wires to be an exceptional find. Its holes are rusted and may contain traces of metal wires.

“We will hand over the calibration plate to the laboratory for spectrometric analysis, which will help us determine what material the wire was made of. The thinned wire could have been used, for example, to make chain mail,” added Moš. According to experts, this is an exceptional find in Central Europe.

The calibration plate was discovered in a rescue archaeology excavation along the route of a high-speed railway being built between Nezamyslice and Kojetín. The excavation of this 1.2 km stretch of the railway has uncovered more than 1,000 objects ranging in date from the Early Bronze Age to the Roman Imperial period.

The earliest finds are the remains of pile dwellings from the Early Bronze Age Veteřov culture. Details of the plaster coating the wattle and daub walls, including traces of the exterior decoration and the impression of wooden rods (wattle) on the interior, were preserved when the building was destroyed by fire. Other artifacts from the period include ceramic vessels, spindle whorls, beads, a bone needle and a bronze pin with a Cypriot-type head which predates all of the artifacts in the group and is evidence of trade or cultural interactions over long distances. Two burials in the settlement were also discovered, one of them containing the skeletal remains of one adult and one child.

From the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age, archaeological materials and human remains of the Urnfield culture were found at the site. There was an Urnfield settlement there, and remains of structures have been unearthed as well as pottery. The most unexpected find was a group of partial skeletal remains in one of the settlement structures. Inside a backfilled pit, archaeologists discovered six skulls placed side by side. Urnfield peoples cremated the dead, and these were not inhumation burials given that there are no other bones, which suggests a ritual purpose. Nothing like that has been found before in Urnfield sites.

Objects relating to metal casting were found in the Urnfield settlement layer. Stone casting molds, crucibles and bronze objects (axes, needles, a knife) indicate these was a specialized workshop at the site where bronze objects were produced. They all date to the period of transition from Late Bronze Age to Early Iron Age.

All of the finds recovered in the excavation have been transferred to the Archaeological Center Olomouc. The artifacts are now being cleaned, documented and conserved and subjected to scientific analyses. In addition to the material analysis of the calibration plate, the stone molds will also be tested for traces of the metals cast in them.

* This article was originally published here

Hollywood actor to join Welsh soap after learning language

By: SGK ADVERTISING ADDA on April 27, 2026 / comment : 0 BBC News, news

Better Call Saul actor Hans Obma says Wales has "always been meaningful" to him.

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Influencer dies days after being hit by car in Soho

By: SGK ADVERTISING ADDA on April 27, 2026 / comment : 0 news, films E

Klaudia Zakrzewska, 32, from Essex, dies in hospital after a collision on Argyll Street in Soho.

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Gladiator Giant claims he was axed from BBC show over girlfriend's job

By: SGK ADVERTISING ADDA on April 27, 2026 / comment : 0 news, films E

Jamie Bigg says he wanted to publicise his relationship and was told he "wouldn't be continuing" on the show.

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Hollywood actor to join Welsh soap after learning language

By: SGK ADVERTISING ADDA on April 27, 2026 / comment : 0 news, films E

Better Call Saul actor Hans Obma says Wales has "always been meaningful" to him.

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2,000-Year-Old Hadrian’s Wall Cup Discovered in Spain

By: SGK ADVERTISING ADDA on April 26, 2026 / comment : 0

A bronze cup with enamel decoration depicting Hadrian’s Wall has been discovered in Berlanga de Duero, Spain. It is the second vessel of the Hadrian’s Wall type found in Spain, and is the only one of any of them to name forts on the east side of the wall. A new study of the Berlanga Cup has been published in the journal Britannia.

The first of these vessels, later known as Hadrian’s Wall pans, was discovered in Rudge, Wiltshire, in 1725. It was inscribed along the rim with the names of five of the forts on the western sector of Hadrian’s Wall, information which was helped scholars at the time conclusively identify the known forts. The Rudge Cup is decorated with schematic representations of the Wall’s fortlets and turrets in Champlevé enamel (small cells cut into the bronze and filled with different colors of enamel).

In the 20th century, three more vessels and two fragments were found in France, England and Spain. The Hadrian’s Wall type vessels are believed to date to the 130s A.D., shortly after the completion of the Wall. They have been interpreted as souvenirs or presentation vessels acquired near the Wall, but there is no evidence of where they manufactured.

The Berlanga Cup was found in farmland where subsequent archaeological investigations uncovered evidence of a Roman rural settlement or a large country villa complex. It was broken into four fragments, with one of them comprising more than half of the bowl. It is a hemispherical bowl just under 4.5 inches in diameter at the widest point below the rim. About 3.2 inches high, it is the largest of the Hadrian’s Walls pans.

The inscription at the rim is missing some letters due to the missing fragments, but the surviving letters are […]RNVMONNOV[…]DOBALACONDERCOM. This breaks down into the names the forts of Cilurnum (Chesters, Northumberland), Onno (Halton Chesters, Northumberland), Vindobala (Rudchester, Northumberland) and Condercom (Benwell, Northumberland) represented as [CILU]RNUM, ONNO, V[IN]DOBALA and CONDERCOM.

It is enamelled in the same colors as the other pans (navy blue, green, red, turquoise) and like the comparable vessels, it depicts stylized representations of the ashlar masonry of Hadrian’s Wall.

The central frieze is organised into three bands of squares, alternating green and blue, which gives an appearance of unity. Finally, the central frieze combines two types of metopes, separated by a thick serrated cord whose interior is enamelled in red. The first metopes are presented as a projection of the lower frieze in the form of a crenellated tower. The interior of these is divided into four squares filled with blue and turquoise enamel, with two half-moons at the base filled with turquoise. The second type of metope is decorated with four-petalled flowers filled with turquoise enamel. These floral motifs are framed above and below by two green enamelled crescents and, on the sides, by triangles filled with blue enamel. This colourful decoration even extends to the letters and symbols of the inscription, which are also filled with turquoise.

The upper friezes, present on all Hadrian’s Wall pans except the Ilam Pan, have traditionally been interpreted by most researchers as an elevation of the wall itself, from which crenellated turrets protrude, which can be seen as military forts, perhaps those mentioned in the epigraphy. The two largest cups, the Berlanga and the Hildburgh fragment, also show a third frieze at the bottom with curved motifs which, if we follow the majority hypothesis, should be interpreted as the ditch in front of the wall.

The discovery of the Berlanga Cup with its eastern fort names confirm that the pans were not part of a single set. They each name different forts, and they are different enough from each other in shape and design, so they weren’t created to match each other. It’s likely instead that the bodies of the cups were made first, then the bronze finished, the inscription added to order and the enamel applied to the inside of the lettering.

* This article was originally published here

'My living nightmare' - Director Rob Reiner's son bares soul on how he found out parents were dead

By: SGK ADVERTISING ADDA on April 26, 2026 / comment : 0 BBC News, news

Jake Reiner says the grief of his parents' brutal deaths and the arrest of his own brother left him in a "trance".

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