2 h. ago Shoppers can save £150 on giant palm tree that 'adds a sunny desert island feel to your patio'

This giant palm tree that's currently boasting a huge £150 off is perfect for adding a tropical touch to any outdoor spcae

Economics

6 h. ago 'I opened the curtains and swore...red paint everywhere': Man tells of attack on his home wrongly dubbed a brothel

Third early-morning attack on same Walthamstow homes and businesses

Events

6 h. ago ‘It makes me sick!’ How the likes of the French impressionists went from ‘lunatics’ to luminaries

The National Gallery of Victoria’s new show, French Impressionism, celebrates the likes of Monet, Renoir, Degas, Morisot and Pissarro, who painted in the face of public outrageGet our weekend culture and lifestyle email“Five or six lunatics deranged by ambition – one of them a woman – have chosen to exhibit their works,” French critic Albert Wolff wrote in a review of an art exhibition in Paris in 1876. The lunatics in question were a group of up-and-coming artists: Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Berthe Morisot, Camille Pissarro and Edgar Degas.Almost 150 years later, we know now that those lunatics took over the asylum. The impressionists, who rebelled against the old masters by painting lighter, brighter, ephemeral scenes, are today’s old masters; what was so shocking then is now all over our calendars, coffee cups and phone cases. But back in 1876, those looking at their works “are content to laugh at such things,” Wolff wrote sniffily. “But it makes me sick ...

Politics

6 h. ago ‘It makes me sick!’ How the French impressionists went from ‘lunatics’ to luminaries

The National Gallery of Victoria’s new show, French Impressionism, celebrates the likes of Monet, Renoir, Degas, Morisot and Pissarro, who painted in the face of public outrageGet our weekend culture and lifestyle email“Five or six lunatics deranged by ambition – one of them a woman – have chosen to exhibit their works,” French critic Albert Wolff wrote in a review of an art exhibition in Paris in 1876. The lunatics in question were a group of up-and-coming artists: Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Berthe Morisot, Camille Pissarro and Edgar Degas.Almost 150 years later, we know now that those lunatics took over the asylum. The impressionists, who rebelled against the old masters by painting lighter, brighter, ephemeral scenes, are today’s old masters; what was so shocking then is now all over our calendars, coffee cups and phone cases. But back in 1876, those looking at their works “are content to laugh at such things,” Wolff wrote sniffily. “But it makes me sick ...

Politics

6 h. ago As a child I showed little interest in my mum’s sewing skills. After she died, I realised what I’d missed out on | Nova Weetman

She filled my wardrobe with patchwork skirts and home-knitted vests and a dark-green corduroy coat – things that I would kill for nowThere is a photograph of a very young me wearing a homemade A-line denim dress with a peace sign boldly embroidered on the front. Mum made me the dress for an anti-nuclear rally sometime in the mid-1970s. I don’t remember wearing it that day, or being carried on my dad’s shoulders as we marched with thousands of protesters, but I do recall wearing many of the other clothes Mum made me as a child.There was a lemon floor-length cotton number that she pintucked by hand for my role as the narrator in the school play that would swish around my ankles as I walked across the stage. And a white cropped top that she splattered with neon paint, designed to show up under the fluorescent lights of the Blue Light disco when I was in my Wham phase and trying to attract a boy I liked from school. But my favourite was the spotted taffeta bubble skirt of my dreams that...

Events

7 h. ago Giant palm tree that ‘adds a sunny desert island feel to your patio’ has £150 off

Add a tropical twist to your garden or patio with a 'lush, exotic and winter-hardy' palm tree that's currently on sale with a massive £150 discount, thanks to this limited-time deal

Economics

8 h. ago Yoshitomo Nara review: cutesy terrors swear, smoke, play guitar and burn down houses

Hayward Gallery, LondonThe Japanese artist’s instantly recognisable delinquent infants fill a huge show that also includes more sombre – and still angry – work made since the Fukushima disasterThere’s a video online of 100 kids playing football against three adult pros. The kids get absolutely annihilated. But they’d do a whole lot better if they were more like the menacing, knife-wielding little terrors who populate Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara’s world. Try dribbling past a toddler when he’s just jabbed a shiv in your calf, Lionel Messi.For 40 years now Nara has been dealing in cutesy kitsch with a vicious edge. His paintings and drawings of adorably bug-eyed little nippers are singularly Nara: love it or hate it, he’s carved out his own instantly recognisable aesthetic path. Continue reading...

Events

8 h. ago Man banned from keeping animals after giving ‘rescued’ birds marijuana and painting their claws with nail polish

Lee Jefferson had failed to get veterinary treatment for two injured birds

Events

10 h. ago 'Greatest religious discovery since Dead Sea Scrolls' found under prison

An ancient mosaic unearthed from beneath the floor of an Israeli prison is being hailed as the "greatest religious discovery since the Dead Sea Scrolls" - and the earliest known attestation of Jesus as God

Events

10 h. ago The 7 common design mistakes that will instantly date your home

Redecorating or renovating a home is an exciting endeavour, but amidst the enthusiasm, it's easy to make decorating mistakes while navigating layouts, paint swatches, and budgets.

Politics

15 h. ago Artists, Siblings, Visionaries by Judith Mackrell review – the remarkable lives of Gwen and Augustus John

Gwen’s talent vastly outshone her brother’s – but both are treated with subtlety in this outstanding dual biographyA young woman sits reading, a pot of tea to hand, her blue dress almost the only colour in a still, sandy room. Gwen John’s painting The Convalescent shows a subdued yet happy moment, for this woman is free to think and feel. That, we see in Judith Mackrell’s outstanding double biography of Gwen and her brother, was her ideal for living: to be at liberty even if that meant existing in deepest solitude.The quietness of a life spent largely alone in single rooms, reading, drawing, painting and occasionally having wild sex with the sculptor Rodin, is counterpointed in this epic narrative by the crowded, relentless, almost insanely overstimulated life of Augustus John. Lion of the arts in early 20th-century Britain, he was a bigamist, adulterer, father of so many children you lose track (so did he), and an utterly forgettable painter. Continue reading...

Politics

15 h. ago Art for Everybody review – the dark side of Thomas Kinkade, ‘painter of light’

The extraordinarily popular painter of kitsch American scenes struggled with addiction and depression, as this documentary with access to his previously unseen works showsYou won’t find the works of Thomas Kinkade lining the walls of the Museum of Modern Art, yet the painter, who died in 2012, is one of the best-selling artists in history and his paintings hang in tens of millions of American households. Kinkade’s typical subjects – rustic landscapes, sleepy cottages, quaint gazebos – bask in an idyllic calm, a luminous callback to a fabled simpler past. Turning to his unpublished archive, Miranda Yousef’s engrossing documentary portrait unveils the dark shadows that lurked within the self-titled “painter of light”.Through interviews with family members, close collaborators and critics, as well as Kinkade’s own words, the film traces his meteoric success in the 1980s and 90s. Shunned by the art world, he marketed his works through home-shopping television channels and a network of f...

Politics

30 h. ago Skintight leggings or baggy joggers? What your gymwear says about you – and the world

Social media will tell you that all millennials dress one way to work out, while gen Z dresses another. The truth is more complex and far more interestingAround me, a group of women in skintight gym sets are side planking. Some are wearing full-coverage unitards, others leave slices of midriff bare. No one is wearing a baggy T-shirt from 2008 with a naked Rufus Wainwright on it, and hardened flecks of damp-proof paint. Except me.If TikTok is to be believed, my gym-mates must be millennials, born between the early 1980s and the mid-1990s; gen Z would find such skin-tightness a bit retro, or basic, or even “jurassic fitness”. Another generational schism has opened online – to add to socks, jeans and boundaries – this time over what millennials and gen Z are wearing to work out in. Tight-on-tight outfits supposedly single you out as a millennial – it is “giving middle school”, said one gen Z user witheringly – while gen Z prefers something baggier. Looking around me at pilates and in t...

Politics

35 h. ago The six million skeletons hidden in over 150 miles of tunnels under Paris' streets

From the Eiffel Tower to the Louvre, Paris' top tourist attractions draw around 50 million visitors to the French capital every year. But many travellers miss one of the city's more curious landmarks...

Events

45 h. ago Pioneering device could help patients with Parkinson's, which affects 150,000 people in the UK, to walk again

Nearly 150,000 people in the UK suffer from Parkinson's disease, a degenerative condition that can cause tremors, muscle stiffness and slowness of movement as nerve cells in the brain die.

Science

49 h. ago I am a trans teenager. This is what it means to hate the shape of your own skin | Elsie Thwaites

There are sudden moments of ecstatic joy, but it’s terrifying to realise what you want to be and everything you’ve forced downYou’re fairly sure your skin has always been a problem. A problem before you even realised, lurking in the background of your earliest memories. Never with a clear mark for when you realised it was a problem. (When you realised what it means, to hate your skin so much.) But with signs scattered throughout your life.The very earliest sign was swimming. Or clothes in general, really, but swimming was the easy one. When you swam, you always wore (and always still wear) a shirt, even though the males of your family don’t. More broadly, you refuse to ever be seen without one. You called it modesty, but now you know it as shame. Shame for your square-ish, flat, slightly hairy flesh prison. Because, even then, you knew your chest should be covered up, even though your skin is flush against your ribs and males don’t need to cover up. Continue reading...

Politics

50 h. ago Netflix fans just have days to watch Florence Pugh's ‘inspiring’ breakout role

One of Florence Pugh’s earliest and best movies is only on Netflix until the end of the month

Sport

54 h. ago MPs could vote to force government to build 150,000 social homes a year

A proposed change to the Planning and Infrastructure bill would demand a 150,000 target for building social homes this Parliament

Politics

55 h. ago Painter gets 'sweet revenge' on customer who refused to pay for garden fence job

A tradesman has shared his fury after a customer refused to pay for a service, so he decided to take matters into his own hands and get 'revenge' on the non-paying client

Economics

56 h. ago Ajax striker Brian Brobbey was the ‘target of violent extortion threats’

Brobbey allegedly blackmailed by Amsterdam criminalIncidents included arson, explosions and a shootingThe Ajax striker Brian Brobbey has been the target of violent extortion threats involving arson, explosions and a shooting, according to reports in the Netherlands.Het Parool reports that the attacks on Brobbey came after he allegedly refused to pay €150,000 to an Amsterdam criminal who claimed to have “solved a problem” for him. Continue reading...

Events