“Why you see the issue of paedophilia, child predation and child trafficking [become] such an issue in politics is because it is an extraordinarily easy issue to align yourself with,” says Osit. Despite being a survivor of child sexual abuse himself, he received death threats for questioning Hansen’s methods in …

From Verity and Digger to Sense and Sensibility BBC News

As a new Sense and Sensibility hits cinemas, experts share the common mistakes BBC News

The tower’s lower level is intended to appeal to slow worms, newts and other small wildlife. It sits within a seasonally wet landscape, and is full of gaps and crevices for them. Higher up, pieces of larch timber have been stacked, again with openings, recesses and perches for insects and …

“One of the cardinal things in The Hobbit is one of the few adventures I ever went through in my life,” he said. “We crossed many mountain passes… We wore only packs on our back. We slept in the most extraordinary places. We had some narrow escapes from death, rather …

From adaptations of East of Eden and Carrie to a new serial killer thriller BBC News

The actor who portrays Liberace in the play, revered British Shakespearean Simon Russell Beale, tells the BBC that Liberace made a significant “gamble” by taking the case to court – had he lost, his career could have been ruined. But Beale also observes that the “specific lie that Liberace told” …

In German artist Albrecht Dürer’s woodcut print on paper, a nude Magdalene is lifted towards the sky by six angels. The scene is inspired by The Golden Legend, a 13th-Century text by the Italian chronicler and archbishop Jacobus de Voragine. In one of the popular stories included in the legend, …

While the rhyme might misidentify the killer, it also exaggerates the number of blows as well as the weapon (it was a hatchet, a small axe that is light enough to use with one hand). But the sequence of events is accurate – whoever killed Andrew and Abby Borden on …

In 1975, the BBC investigated the lucrative global trade in stolen antiquities BBC News

Martin McDonagh’s last film, The Banshees of Inisherin, was nominated for nine Oscars, but didn’t win any. Could Wild Horse Nine do any better? A politically charged black comedy about two CIA agents on holiday on Easter Island in 1973, it’s a showcase for another of McDonagh’s dysfunctional double acts, …

Why has the UK’s master of romantic fiction disappeared from memory? BBC News

David Byrne has co-written Let Me Sell You a Dream for the film’s closing credits, which has lyrics consisting entirely of phrases spoken by Musk in the past. The title is appropriate, according to some of Gibney’s interviewees, who say that Musk tends to attract investment by promising that imagined …

The US’s first literary obscenity trial dated back to 1821, when John Cleland’s 1779 novel Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, about the life of a sex worker, was banned. Since the 19th Century, US obscenity law had been modelled on that in Britain, which itself was founded …

This 40,000-sq ft resort occupies a sloped terrain, and one of its aims is to minimise its impact on the landscape. The complex, designed by Aslam Sham Architects, comprises closely grouped buildings, and fills a plot with a curving perimeter. Its buildings include villas, a restaurant and swimming pool, and …

A 1978 killing is one of the great unsolved mysteries of the Cold War BBC News

The film is inspired by the true story of Chris Hansen, an Emmy-winning American journalist, and his most famous / notorious television show, To Catch a Predator, which ran as part of Dateline NBC from 2004 to 2007. The programme staged sting operations aimed at would-be paedophiles. Its staff would …

Art history proves the point. More than 400 years ago, Caravaggio split the opinions of his contemporaries with the groundbreaking levels of violence, sexual tension and darkness of his religious paintings, factors that brought him to international prominence. The artists of the 19th Century who are nowadays most valorised, such …

The new film by Irish director Martin McDonagh is a 1970s spy yarn with bite BBC News

The new film by Irish director Martin McDonagh is a 1970s spy yarn with bite BBC News