Political relations between Britain and Russia may still be in the deep freeze, but when it comes to culture the countries appear not to have noticed anything amiss and are enjoying a rare boom.

The Pushkin Museum in Moscow opened an exhibition of paintings by Joseph Turner yesterday, the first time that the British artist has been displayed in Russia since 1975. The show contains 112 works in a partnership with Tate Britain that has been underwritten by the billionaire Alisher Usmanov.

It follows the success of an exhibition of British dress from the 18th and 19th centuries at the Kremlin Museums, which closed on Sunday after drawing record crowds. More than 65,000 people came to see Two Centuries of British Fashion, which featured 90 pieces from the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum. It was the first time that the Kremlin and the V&A had collaborated on an exhibition.

The Kremlin Museums are repaying the compliment by lending...

Medical records belonging to a Victorian mental patient suspected of being the serial killer Jack the Ripper have been made public.

The documents detail the treatment of Thomas Hayne Cutbush at Broadmoor, the high-security hospital for the criminally insane.

Cutbush, a disturbed and violent youth, became insane in 1888, the year of the killings, and was wandering the streets of London. He was sent to Lambeth Infirmary in 1891 suffering delusions thought to have been caused by syphilis. But he immediately escaped and stabbed one woman then attempted to stab a second.

He was pronounced insane and committed to Broadmoor in 1891 where he remained until his death in 1903. From the day he was detained, the Ripper attacks ceased.

French experts said on Tuesday they had proof that the Hope Diamond, a star exhibit in Washington's Smithsonian Institution, is a legendary gem once owned by King Louis XIV that was looted in the French Revolution.

New evidence unearthed in France's National Museum of Natural History shows beyond reasonable doubt that the Hope Diamond is the same steely-blue stone once sported by the Sun King, they said.

Mineralogist Francois Farges, heading an investigation published in a peer-reviewed French journal, told AFP he was now "99 percent sure" that the Hope and the mythical Blue Diamond of the Crown were one and the same.

"The evidence corroborates a scenario under which the diamond, after being stolen in Paris in 1792, was swiftly smuggled to London, where it was recut," he said.

The reviews of director Marc Forster's "Quantum of Solace" have complained about the film's hectic pace (reminiscent of Doug Liman's and Paul Greengrass's Bourne thrillers), about the humorlessness of Daniel Craig's Bond, and even about the squalid surroundings, so unlike Monaco and Prague, in which the film is set (with many scenes in Haiti and Bolivia). They have missed the most remarkable departure of all. Forster presents us with a new phenomenon in the James Bond films, a Bond at odds with the United States, who risks his career to save Evo Morales's leftist regime in Bolivia from being overthrown by a General Medrano, who is helped by the CIA and a private mercenary organization called Quantum. In short, this Bond is more Michael Moore than Roger Moore.

The plot of the film was developed by producer Michael G. Wilson during the filming of "Casino Royale." New York-born Wilson is from a show-business family (his father, Lewis Wilson, was the first...

They say if you just wait 23 centuries, the same fashions will come around again. Back then, the Greeks erected the Colossus of Rhodes, a 34-meter high statue to the sun god Helios, and it stood for nearly 70 years until destroyed in 226. The new collossus, designed by East German artist Gert Hof, will be a decidedly more modern creation: the world’s largest light installation. It will stand 60 to 100 meters tall and cost 200 million euros to complete. Built in part from melted-down weapons, the installation will celebrate peace, just as its predecessor did.

For Beatles fans across the world it has gained near mythical status. The 14-minute improvised track called 'Carnival of Light' was recorded in 1967 and played just once in public. It was never released because three of the Fab Four thought it too adventurous.

The track, a jumble of shrieks and psychedelic effects, is said to be as far from the melodic ballads that made Sir Paul McCartney famous as it is possible to imagine. But now McCartney has said that the public will have the chance to judge for themselves.

'It does exist,' McCartney says on a BBC Radio 4 arts programme to be broadcast this week. Talking to John Wilson, the presenter of Front Row, the former Beatle confirms that he still has a master tape of the work and says he suspects that 'the time has come for it to get its moment'.

'I like it because it's the Beatles free, going off piste,' he adds.

In the 40 years since 'Carnival of Light' was recorded by McCartney, Ringo...

As BBC documentaries go, World War II: Behind Closed Doors is rather significant. Not only is it the last series that will be written and directed by Laurence Rees, the BBC's creative head of history (Rees, who brought us such magnificent films as The Nazis: a Warning from History and Auschwitz, is leaving the corporation to devote himself to writing), it also signals the climax of the inexorable march within the BBC towards "presenter-led" history documentaries. From now on, we can expect to see fewer sombrely narrated films featuring grainy archive material and talking heads, and a lot more . . . what? A lot more hand-waving is what it boils down to. The talk within the BBC is of "resonance". Apparently, we, the audience, only care for history that directly speaks to us, to our own situations, and it will be the job of the presenter, be it Bettany Hughes (The Spartans) or Dan Snow (co-presenter on 20th Century Battlefields) to articulate these "parallels...

Never-before-seen images are shining new light on a grim chapter of Washington's history, when the Ku Klux Klan operated from state headquarters in Belltown, its members gathering robed and hooded at what longtime Seattleites might remember as the Crystal Pool.

The additions to a University of Washington Web site came about as part of a senior-level history class. The rare photos and newspaper clippings tell of the Klan's broad presence in this region during the 1920s.

There's the Sedro-Woolley wedding of Klan members in full regalia, a night parade in Bellingham and rallies in places like Renton and Issaquah that at times drew crowds of up to 50,000.

The two executioners waiting on the small scaffold erected outside the Banqueting House in Whitehall were disguised in masks and long grey wigs, adding to the macabre theatricality of the occasion. The wooden platform on which they stood was sprinkled with sand to soak up the blood that would shortly be spilled, and scattered about were staples and lengths of rope to tie down the condemned man in the event he became difficult. An open coffin lay nearby, with a folded black velvet pall. And, of course, there was the block and, beside it, the axe. In the open space below, mounted troopers mingled with the crowd. Soldiers took up position between them and the scaffold. It was a bitterly cold day. That winter the Thames froze.

Early in the afternoon, Charles Stuart, "that man of blood", stepped through one of the Banqueting House's windows and on to the scaffold. Seventeenth-century executions were highly ritualised affairs and the crowd would have known the order of...