Cover-ups rectify poorly etched or unwanted ‘tats’ and are now a big part of artists’ business. But not all are fixable, says Jonathan deBurca Butler

Des O’Sullivan reviews a forthcoming show of work by the artist who was brave enough to paint the Famine. 

Kya deLongchamps considers the emotional and political significance of the Chequers Ring, one of the few surviving objects connected to the very private life of Elizabeth I, Queen of England.

A new chapter in the story of Anne Boleyn worthy of an episode of Wolf Hall has been unveiled, thanks to facial recognition technology. Henry VIII’s attempt to erase his second wife from history after chopping off her head may have been thwarted after more than 470 years.

USA:

Hosting a global sporting occasion won’t make a country rich, and isn’t even that good for tourism — but it will make its people happy.

It’s nearly 45 years since The Beatles broke up but their influence on popular music is as strong as ever. Joe Dermody on Hunter Davies’ encyclopedic book on the band’s ground-breaking lyrics.

Will Irish artist Duncan Campbell win the Turner Prize tonight? He talks with Alan O’Riordan

LIME LEAK

CRANBERRY, ruby or gold ruby glass will not be ignored. You can set a single piece on a mantle, or crowd it at the back of a glazed cabinet.

AMNESIA MYSTERY

Hollywood blockbuster tackles a story that always intrigues, writes Dan Buckley.

Further to the column from the Arts Editor, “Stolen Moments in British Museum” (Nov 4) in which he demanded all artefacts held by the museum should be returned to the original owners, on Nov 24 Channel 4 and The Sunday Telegraph covered the likely discovery of the site of one of the wonders of the ancient world, the legendary Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

Your arts editor needs a month off work, for an in-depth reality check. His article, ‘Stolen moments in British Museum’, (Irish Examiner, Nov 4), calls for items to be returned to their countries of origin.

THE British are peculiar. Their desire to conquer the world has been matched only by their obsession with bringing bits of it home with them.

LONDON could be forgiven for resting on its laurels.

Almost 900 artefacts illegally looted by a treasure hunter with a metal detector have been recovered, it emerged last night.

Munster Rugby have brought in some of the country’s leading businessmen to help steer them through the economic downturn.

Artist Patricia Looby’s love of fabrics and religious relics inspired her show at Christchurch, says Tina O’Sullivan

London’s tourism industry is struggling to compete with the impact of the Olympic Games, which has left the host city a “ghost town”, businesses said yesterday.

The boss of UK business lobby group CBI, Richard Lambert, is to step down in 2011 after nearly five years at the helm, it was announced today.

THE Staffordshire Hoard, the largest collection of Anglo-Saxon treasure ever found, has been valued at £3.28 million (€3.6m), the British Museum has said.

AN expert on Anglo-Saxon inscription at University College Cork has helped to date part of a treasure hoard described as Britain’s equivalent to the Book of Kells.

AN amateur treasure hunter prowling English farmland with a metal detector stumbled upon the largest Anglo-Saxon treasure hoard ever discovered, a massive collection of gold and silver crosses, sword decorations and other items, British archaeologists said yesterday.

ARCHAEOLOGISTS unveiled what they believe is the oldest known sculpture of the human form – a tiny figurine of a woman carved from a mammoth’s tusk at least 35,000 years ago.

Richard Collins says a new book dispels some myths about hedgehogs.

A 50kg solid gold statue of supermodel Kate Moss will be unveiled today.

Greece has finally taken possession of a chunk of the Elgin Marbles, and now holds renewed hopes of regaining the rest.

RELIGIOUS people, the world over, go on pilgrimages and venerate relics.

A PENSIONER who fooled the art world for years by selling fake antiques his son had “knocked up” in his garden shed avoided a jail sentence yesterday.

SENTENCING has been adjourned for a pensioner who fooled the art world for years by selling “antiques” his son had “knocked up” in his garden shed.

AN unprecedented exhibition featuring warriors from China’s Terracotta Army takes place at the British Museum from Thursday. About a dozen of the world-famous figures have been moved across the world from the tomb of China’s First Emperor, where they were uncovered in 1974.

Tajikistan’s president wants Britain to return a British Museum collection of ancient gold and silver objects known as the Oxus treasure.

THE three-day auction of 76,000 pieces of Chinese export porcelain from the Ca Mau shipwreck at Sotheby’s in Amsterdam raised €3,046,716, more than double the pre-sale estimate.

IT’S a moral quandary, even a ghoulish issue, some might say. The respect that ought to be accorded skeletal human remains that turn up in long-forgotten cemeteries and, especially, in bogland excavations continues to exercise people.

Celebrity Paris Hilton has become the latest victim of “guerrilla artist” Banksy after he doctored hundreds of copies of her latest album and smuggled them into record shops.

THE historic Book of Lismore was compiled at the Franciscan Monastery in Timoleague, and not in Waterford, as its title might indicate.

Two sacred paintings have been returned to Ethiopia 137 years after they were ripped out of a holy book by invading British troops.

Tony Blair must return Ethiopian sacred objects and ancient artefacts looted by British troops more than a century ago and now locked up in museums and royal palaces, a leading scholar demanded today.

A NEW campaign to return the Elgin Marbles to Greece was launched yesterday but was met with indifference by the British Government.

The “vast majority” of Britons support a Greek proposal to return marbles removed from the ancient Parthenon for display in Athens during the Olympics, the Greek government’s top games official said.

Accurate, detailed information on the priceless antiquities looted from Iraqi museums is crucial for the international effort to track them down, experts and officials said at a meeting on stolen artefacts today.

SOME of the first examples of written words and number systems from the dawn of civilisation are missing from museums in Baghdad.