Letter: Desmond Morris obituary

I often saw Desmond Morris and his wife, Ramona, when attending Oxford United FC home games at the Manor Ground, before its move to the present Kassam Stadium in 2001. He was a season ticket holder and at different times a director, vice-chairman and vice-president of the club. Some of these roles were taken up when Robert Maxwell owned the club, but they eventually fell out.However, Morris is probably best remembered for the creation of the inspirational club logo of an ox head, based on a powerful Minoan bull. His undoubted artistic talents have been deployed by the club since 1978 and the logo continues to be used on the shirts worn by players and coaching staff, and related merchandise

Boom! A melodrama fit for Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton’s doomed love affair

“My very first memory is of pain.” More than a touch dramatic, the words could easily be lifted from the script of Boom! Instead, they are a real-life confession by its leading lady, Elizabeth Taylor.When it comes to pain, Taylor is the poster child-star. In her long life, the actor underwent more than 30 surgeries and was supposedly hospitalised on more than 100 occasions. After a bout of pneumonia almost took her out in 1961, it was the pain of nearly losing her that led to her best actress sympathy win at the Oscars

Jon Stewart on White House correspondents’ dinner: ‘We can’t even pull off a dinner that shouldn’t have existed in the first place’

Late-night hosts responded to the White House correspondents’ dinner shooting and Donald and Melania Trump’s attempts to blame political violence on Jimmy Kimmel’s jokes.Jon Stewart resumed his Monday night chair at the Daily Show less than two days after the shocking attack at the White House correspondents’ dinner on Saturday night, which resulted in the arrest of one man and, thankfully, no injuries. “It was supposed to be an evening of fun and merriment until, like most things in America, it was interrupted by gunfire,” Stewart said. “This is why we can’t have nice things. And to be perfectly frank, it’s not even a nice thing

Antiquities dealer who exposed thefts at British Museum dies aged 61

The academic turned antiquities dealer who exposed the theft of hundreds of artefacts from the British Museum has died aged 61.Dr Ittai Gradel, from Denmark, alerted the British Museum and the police after he was able to buy dozens of museum artefacts on eBay over the course of several years.Gradel died of renal cancer days after receiving a rarely presented medal from the museum in recognition of what its director called his “very significant contribution”, according to the BBC.A police investigation is still ongoing, more than three years after the museum reported the thefts to Scotland Yard after pressure from Gradel. Before his death in a Danish hospice, Gradel – who would have been a key witness in any trial – told the BBC it was “a bit annoying” he wouldn’t live to see the resolution of the case

‘Protected for another century’: experts lift 15-tonne foremast from HMS Victory

There is only one correct way to extricate a 15-tonne wrought iron mast from one of the world’s most famous and beloved warships – very slowly, and with extreme care.Which is precisely how a 30-strong team led by shipwrights and riggers set about their task on Monday night into Tuesday morning when they lifted the foremast from HMS Victory as part of a £42m conservation project.A 750-tonne crane removed the 23-metre mast from the ship in an operation requiring power to lift the wrought iron structure but also a great deal of delicacy to make sure the fabric of the vessel was not harmed.In the coming days, as long as the wind does not get up, two more masts – the mizzen and bowsprit – will also be craned off Nelson’s 18th-century flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar and laid on a Portsmouth dockside ready for conservation work to begin.At daybreak on Tuesday, Patrizia Pierazzo, the deputy project director, hailed it as a “great start”

Having Spent Life Seeking by Kae Tempest review – painfully earnest tale of trauma and transition

Kae Tempest’s new novel is dedicated to “you”, the reader. It also comes with a plea: “Be gentle though.” But to whom or what should we be gentle? The book or the writer? Having Spent Life Seeking is Tempest’s second novel, arriving a decade after his first and following a period of considerable personal change, including gender transition. Perhaps inevitably, it is a book full of struggle and soul-searching. It is also painfully earnest: an enervating read with an exhausting intensity that neither relents nor resolves