British Library to reinstate Oscar Wilde’s reader card 130 years after it was revoked

The British Library is to symbolically reinstate Oscar Wilde’s reader pass, 130 years after its trustees cancelled it following his conviction for gross indecency.A contemporary pass bearing the name of the Irish author and playwright will be officially presented to his grandson, Merlin Holland, at an event in October, it will be announced on Sunday.Rupert Everett, who wrote, directed and starred as Wilde in The Happy Prince – the acclaimed 2018 film about the writer’s tragic final years in exile – will play a part in the ceremony.Holland is an expert on Wilde whose publications include The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde. Asked how his grandfather might have reacted to the pass being reinstated, he said: “He’d probably say ‘about time too’

‘Difficult love’: Spanish publisher reprints groundbreaking book of Lorca’s homoerotic sonnets

In the autumn of 1983, dozens of carefully chosen readers received an envelope containing a slim, red booklet of sonnets that had been locked away since they were written almost 50 years earlier by the most famous Spanish poet of the 20th century.While those behind the initiative gave no clue as to their identities, their purpose was made abundantly clear in the dedication on the booklet’s final page: “This first edition of the Sonnets of Dark Love is being published to remember the passion of the man who wrote them.”Here at last, lovingly pirated and printed in blood-red ink, were the deeply homoerotic and anguished verses that Federico García Lorca had completed not long before he was murdered in the early days of the Spanish civil war.To commemorate the anonymous effort, to revisit a peculiar episode in Spain’s literary history, and to bring the poems to a new audience, a Galician publisher has now brought out a perfect facsimile edition of that groundbreaking 42-year-old booklet.Although long known to Lorca scholars – not least because they had been published in French two years earlier – Los Sonetos del Amor Oscuro had been hidden away by the poet’s family, who believed their tortured and sensual lines would taint his legacy and stir up old hatreds

At Dark Mofo, I joined thousands to watch an artist stage a car crash – months after I was in one

My windscreen exploded when I hit a 16-year-old cyclist with my Toyota Corolla in March, on what was meant to be just a quick trip to the bakery. Glass covered the bag of pastries on my passenger seat as I came to a stop at the end of my street, just 200 metres from my front door.Having flown over my bonnet, the kid was lying on the dewy Brunswick asphalt in a crumple of shock and school uniform, the balance of our lives suspended in his cries: “My back! My back! My back!”This past Saturday, three months to the day since that accident, I went to watch someone deliberately crash a car at Hobart’s Dark Mofo festival. The Brazilian performance artist Paula Garcia was about to willingly pilot an Audi TT into a head-on collision with another Audi TT at the Royal Hobart Regatta Grounds.The work, Crash Body, was the first time Garcia had performed it before an in-person audience

How to Train Your Dragon to Neil Young: your complete entertainment guide to the week ahead

How to Train Your DragonOut now This live-action remake was shot by Bill Pope, the cinematographer behind films as diverse as Clueless, The Matrix and Spider-Man 3, with puppets used on set to give the actors something to work with before painting in the CGI. Starring Mason Thames, Gerard Butler and Nick Frost.Film on Film WeekendBFI Southbank, London, 14 & 15 JuneA whole weekend of films screening exclusively from actual physical prints? Sign us up. Physical film in a digital world is a use-it-or-lose-it kind of treasure, so to see the likes of Star Wars screened from prints, vote with your wallet and get down to the BFI.LollipopOut now Daisy-May Hudson based this portrait of a woman trying to regain custody of her kids on her own experiences of the social care system, with Posy Sterling giving a barnstorming performance as a woman who can’t get a bigger flat because she doesn’t have her children with her, and can’t get her kids back because her flat is too small

The best video games of 2025 so far

From the return of Mario Kart to smash-hit architectural puzzles, an emotional football game and monster-hunting, we look back at the best offerings from the past six months See more of the best culture of 2025 so farTell us your favourite video game of 2025 so farThis unexpected smash-hit puzzle game has you exploring a mysterious mansion with rooms that are different every time. Faced with a closed door, you get to choose what lies beyond it from a small selection of blueprints, drafting as you go. Crammed with devilish logic problems, memory tests and other conundrums, it’s got thousands of players drawing their own maps on graph paper, just like the ZX Spectrum days. Read the full review. Keith StuartThis outrageous role-playing game is like Final Fantasy, if it were set in the Louvre and the world was about to be sucked into a black hole

Brisbane to be transformed by ‘explosion of extraordinary colour’ in citywide art takeover

Meanjin/Brisbane will be transformed into an outdoor gallery of brightly coloured inflatables and sculptures this September, in a citywide takeover as part of Brisbane festival. Internationally renowned Australian artists and designers Craig Redman and Karl Maier – AKA Craig & Karl – will create colourful, inflatable installations on three of the Queensland capital’s central walking bridges, and present a public art trail of sculptures, inflatable installations, projections and animations through the city.“It really will feel like the city is completely alive with this explosion of extraordinary colour,” said the Brisbane festival director, Louise Bezzina.Redman and Maier, who met studying graphic design in Brisbane and currently collaborate remotely from London and New York, have previously created playful public art installations in cities including London, Hong Kong, Seoul and Taiwan, but the Brisbane city takeover will be their most ambitious project to date.Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morningGriffith University Art Museum, the duo’s alma mater, will also host an exhibition of their work, which ranges from art projects to magazine covers and commercial collaborations with the likes of Chanel, Adidas and Apple