SwayBlog

Anne Rice This article is more than 13 years oldAnne Rice 'quits being a Christian'This article is more than 13 years oldTwelve years after she converted from atheism, author of Interview with the Vampire abandons Christianity over its attitude to birth control, homosexuality and scienceTwelve years after she converted to Christianity from atheism, bestselling author Anne Rice has "quit being a Christian" because of the religion's attitude to birth control, homosexuality and science.

TheatreReviewBlack Box, Galway Enda Walsh's new manic physical comedy is like Under Milk Wood as interpreted by Buster KeatonThere's plenty of ballyhoo around Ballyturk. Written and directed by Enda Walsh, and with a cast comprising Cillian Murphy, Stephen Rea and Mikel Murfi, it is the hottest ticket at this year's Galway international arts festival. And deservedly so, because it combines manic physical comedy with a meditation on the brevity of our earthly existence.

Book of the daySociety booksReviewAn amiable history of countercultural agitators, from Amsterdam’s anti-car anarchists to Poland’s ‘revolution of dwarfs’, shows the myriad faces of postwar dissent “Human sacrifices are made daily to this idol of the idiots: car power,” went the statement issued in 1965 by countercultural Dutch anarchists and performance artists calling themselves the Provotariat. Long before Ulez,15-minute cities and Just Stop Oil, the Provos (nothing, it hardly needs saying, to do with Irish republicanism) were trying to end what one of them called “the asphalt terror of the motorised masses”.

From the Guardian archiveEthiopiaEthiopia welcomes the Queen2 February 1965: The state visit was made after the Emperor of Ethiopia visited London when Sir Winston Churchill was Prime Minister Addis Ababa, February 1 The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh came here tonight to a leonine welcome at the start of a week’s state visit to Ethiopia. Waiting for her at the airport was the Emperor of Ethiopia in field-marshal’s uniform and a lion’s mane helmet.

The ObserverFiction in translationReviewThe first world war’s impact on an Austrian clan is a charmingly told, chaotic story rooted in the author’s own history At the centre of this novel, the first by the bestselling Austrian author to be translated into English, is a family and at the centre of the family is a young woman, Maria. The family live in a valley on the western edge of Austria – it is 1914 – and are known by the nearby villagers as “die Bagage” (the undesirables, the riff-raff) because they are poor and because “the kids are half wild”.

New York This article is more than 11 months oldThis article is more than 11 months oldRoland Conner, 50, opens pop-up marijuana shop in Greenwich Village, only second legal dispensary in the state As a New York City teenager, 50-year old Roland Conner found himself harshly punished for minor offenses related to marijuana. A 1991 arrest resulted in a months-long incarceration, as America’s flawed “war on drugs” had an unfairly disproportionate impact on Black and brown youth.

Northern Ireland This article is more than 13 years oldStem cells used to repair boy's windpipeThis article is more than 13 years oldChild from Northern Ireland becomes first in the world to undergo pioneering surgery at Great Ormond Street hospitalPioneering surgery to rebuild an 11-year-old boy's windpipe using his own stem cells was hailed a success today as he prepared to leave hospital. Ciaran Finn-Lynch became the first child in the world to undergo the pioneering trachea transplant in March and is now preparing to return home to Northern Ireland.

World newsWealthy loner picks heirs from phone bookLuis Carlos de Noronha Cabral de Camara boasted of his noble Portuguese lineage, but was not a happy man. As the illegitimate and unloved son of an aristocratic woman, he was rich but had few friends and no offspring of his own. So when it came to writing out his will almost 20 years ago, he asked a Portuguese notary for a copy of the Lisbon phone book and plucked out names at random.

Exhibitions This article is more than 12 years oldWellcome Collection takes a filthy look at an age-old obsessionThis article is more than 12 years oldBaked excrement and elegant Dutch chamber pot among attractions at first exhibition devoted to the battle against dirtThe normally august Wellcome Collection is wallowing in filth, in the first exhibition devoted to dirt and humankind's desperate attempts to control its remorseless accumulation. Exhibits include an elegant Dutch chamber pot, the coffin-like ambulance used to carry away victims of the cholera ravaging London's foetid slums 150 years ago, and five giant grey slabs made by the artist Santiago Sierra from pounded and baked human excrement, created with the help of Dalits who clear India's reeking open sewers by hand.