Manchester Museum asks visitors if Egyptian woman’s body should be taken off display

One of Europe’s leading museums is asking visitors if it should continue to display the body of an ancient Egyptian woman 200 years after it was brought to the UK by cotton merchants, as it “decolonises” some of its most famous exhibits.Manchester Museum, which in May was named 2025’s European museum of the year, is running a consultation on the future of Asru, a woman who lived in Thebes, the ancient city in the location of modern-day Luxor, 2,700 years ago.A plaque at the museum asks: “Should we continue to display the body of Asru?”, inviting visitors to submit answers in a postbox underneath.It adds: “Asru’s mummified body was unwrapped at the Manchester Natural History Society in April 1825. She has regularly been on display for the two centuries since

Andy Lee: ‘It’s illegal to taxidermy a human in Australia. I know because I looked into it’

You wrote your first kids’ book, Do Not Open This Book, on a 40-minute flight as a present for your nephew and you’ve now sold 3m books. Your sister Alex also writes kids’ books. How pissed off with you is she?Hahaha. Look, she should be. But fortunately for me, I have the most supportive siblings so she’s just thrilled for me

My cultural awakening: Buffy gave me the courage to escape my conservative Pakistani upbringing

I was 10, cross-legged on the floor of my parents’ living room in Newcastle, bathed in the blue light of a TV. The volume was set to near-silence – my dad, asleep in another room, had schizophrenia and frontal lobe syndrome, and I didn’t want to wake him. Then, like some divine interruption to the endless blur of news and repeats, I stumbled across Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The show may have been barely audible, but it hit me like a lightning bolt.Before Buffy, life was like a pressure cooker

Your front-row pass to who the performers will be watching at Glastonbury

Hello from Worthy Farm, home to Glastonbury festival! As is tradition, this newsletter is coming to you from a sparsely apportioned cabin behind the festival’s legendary Pyramid stage, which this weekend will feature headline sets from The 1975, Neil Young and Olivia Rodrigo.The festival proper is kicking off right about now, though really it has been whirring away for two days already. The official opening was on Wednesday night: a circus spectacular on the Pyramid stage featuring jugglers, drummers, fire-flinging dancers and a bloke doing handstands on a fairy-light-strewn bike suspended above the audience. The extravaganza came courtesy of the talented folk from Glastonbury’s theatre and circus fields, who were tasked with opening the festival for the first time since the early 90s.(Incidentally, the Theatre and Circus Fields have a pretty remarkable origin story: in 1971 Winston Churchill’s granddaughter Arabella was being relentlessly hounded by the paparazzi in London, having created a bit of a stink by daring to speak out against the Vietnam war

‘Joyous, immersive’ Beamish wins Art Fund museum of the year award

Beamish, the Living Museum of the North, has won the prestigious Art Fund museum of the year award, the largest such prize in the world.Awarding it the £120,000 prize, judges called Beamish a “joyous, immersive and unique place shaped by the stories and experiences of its community”.The open-air museum in County Durham, which is celebrating its 55th anniversary, brings north-east England’s Georgian, Edwardian, 1940s and 1950s history to life through immersive exhibits.Visitors engage with costumed staff and volunteers and experience regional stories of everyday life. The museum has a longstanding commitment to preserving local heritage

Seth Meyers on Trump’s new Nato nickname: ‘Why is anyone calling him daddy?’

Late-night hosts discussed Donald Trump’s belief that he should win a Nobel peace prize and the bizarre new name given to him by the Nato chief.On Late Night, Seth Meyers said that Trump’s insistence that he deserves the Nobel peace prize for inserting himself into the Iran-Israel conflict is “obviously insane” but “at best we can trick him” by offering him a “Babybel piece of cheese on a lanyard”.He added that “no president should get a Nobel peace prize” and played footage of Trump listing all of the things he has done that deserve one. “This idiot thinks it’s the Nathan’s hotdog contest,” he said.Meyers said that Trump is thirsty for praise “for stopping an illegal war he started” and is now “absolutely livid” that the ceasefire was violated