5 d. ago Art fraudster Inigo Philbrick's life after jail and reality TV legend wife

Inigo Philbrick, a British-born art dealer, was once hailed as a prodigy of contemporary art dealing. He was later jailed for orchestrating one of the most audacious art frauds in recent memory.

Events

7 d. ago Shinobi: Art of Vengeance review – Lizardcube does it again with stunning revival of a Sega classic

Following its already excellent work on Streets of Rage 4, Lizardcube injects another Sega series with new life in the utterly terrific Shinobi: Art of Vengeance.

Politics

9 d. ago It’s the great grandparent revolt – and it shows we parents aren’t the only ones burnt out by family life | Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

Politicians are scrabbling to raise birthrates, but when the older generation is the only childcare safety net, that’s a problem ‘Enslaved grandparent syndrome” – sounds extreme, doesn’t it? But that’s what some psychologists in Spain are calling the childcare burden faced by older people in that country, where 35% of people over the age of 65 take care of their grandchildren several days a week. In my London neighbourhood, the sight of a grandparent pushing a baby in a buggy, or a toddler in a swing, is fairly common, but in Madrid, even more so. The latest Europe-wide survey, in 2016, found the proportion of over 65s undertaking childcare at least several days a week in southern European countries – Spain especially, but also in Italy and Greece – is much higher than in France (13%) and Germany (15%) or the UK (18%).This is the result of historical cultural norms of shared care between generations, but now some Spanish grandparents are fighting back. After working all their lives,...

Society

2 w. ago I thought I didn’t care about Renaissance art. Then life happened to me – and I saw its power | Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

There’s a reason these works have influenced great contemporary artists such as Jenny Saville. It just took me a while to truly see itThere is a painting that I think about often. The Madonna del Parto, a masterpiece painted by Piero della Francesca in about 1460, is housed in a dedicated museum in the Tuscan town of Monterchi. It depicts a heavily pregnant Virgin Mary flanked by two angels. To local women, this painting is considered a protector of fertility and the lives of pregnant women during birth. During the second world war, local women surrounded two men whom they had mistaken for a Nazi intent on stealing it. In 1954, they led a protest against its proposed movement to Florence for an exhibition. I remember reading as a student that the women had lain down in the street to block its departure.I thought about those women again yesterday, as I walked around the Jenny Saville exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, tracing the influence of the Renaissance on her work. Sa...

Politics

3 w. ago Strictly Come Dancing star admits she could have died on show after unseen moment

Life very nearly imitated art for one former Strictly Come Dancing contestant when she decided to unclip a safety feature during a daring performance

Events

3 w. ago ‘Flyovers can be incredibly beautiful!’ Long Blondes singer Kate Jackson’s new career as a motorway artist

In her neck scarf and beret, she sang songs that defined the 2000s. Now the frontwoman has a second life – turning unloved roads, bridges and service stations into dazzling ‘pop art’ scenes full of romance and possibilityAs the singer in cult indie band the Long Blondes, Kate Jackson experienced all the thrills of the mid-00s music scene: chaotic gigs, hedonistic parties, an abundance of winklepickers and angular fringes. But years later, when she went back over all the photographs she’d taken during that period, things looked rather different. “I’ve got tons of photos of airport lounges and long stretches of road in Europe,” she says with a shake of the head. “Lots of German service stations. Nothing of the band! No backstage fun, no frolics!”Jackson may regret not capturing more of the band’s short but spectacular heyday, but the road has always been important to her. As a Pulp-obsessed teenager in Bury St Edmunds, she would gaze out of the kitchen window and dream of escaping sma...

Transport