Centuries of dirt and grime are being removed from a Medieval mosaic as two years of restoration work begins at Westminster Abbey in central London.
Henry III commissioned the Cosmati Pavement, an intricate multi-coloured marble, stone and glass floor, as a 13th Century centrepiece for the abbey.
Conservationists are also restoring damaged parts of the mosaic, measuring seven-and-a-half square metres.
It is hoped the restored mosaic will go on permanent public display.

BEFORE Vladimir Nabokov, the author of “Lolita,” “Pale Fire,” “Speak, Memory” and other masterworks, died in Lausanne, Switzerland, in July 1977, he had been hard at work on another novel. The previous December, he told The New York Times that the “not quite finished manuscript” was called “The Original of Laura,” that it had already been “completed in my mind” and that during a recent hospital stay, “in my diurnal delirium,” he had “kept reading it aloud to a small dream audience in a walled garden.” Shortly afterward, Nabokov’s editor at McGraw-Hill revealed that the author was about to do the actual writing, in pencil on 3-by-5-inch index cards (Nabokov never worked with a typewriter). Then, in words parroted by the editor, Nabokov would “deal himself a novel.”

Nabokov, however, was able to build only part of the complete deck — 138 index cards, with many erasures and much emendation — before falling ill for the last time. Known as an artistic perfectionist and a...

Known among enthusiasts as “the hobby,” Colonial-era re-enactments are practiced by fewer than 5,000 people in the United States.... They pale in popularity when compared with Civil War re-enactments. A 1998 commemoration of the 135th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, for example, attracted more than 41,000 participants and 45,000 spectators. Mr. Alcock estimated that Colonial-era dances are performed by fewer than 1,000 people nationwide, the majority of them living in New England and the Middle Atlantic states.

After a 278-year hiatus, a long-lost opera by the Italian Baroque master Antonio Vivaldi will be performed in Prague Saturday in a tour de force for a young Czech conductor with a detective's nose.

"Argippo", a two-hour drama about a young princess smitten with a dishonest suitor, was scouted out nearly a year-and-a-half ago by 37-year-old Ondrej Macek, who founded and directs a Baroque music ensemble.

"I was really very happy when I found the scores that everyone thought lost," he said modestly.