Nature Hub

         From =BBC News        Devon Van Houten Maldonado -  Features correspondent        Edited by  Amal Udawatta Museo Nacional de Arte de Mexico The colour survives in the work of 17th Century Spanish colonial painters, a symbol of the wealth that ultimately doomed the Maya, writes Devon Van Houten Maldonado. In 17th Century Europe, when Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio and Peter Paul Rubens painted their famous masterworks, ultramarine blue pigment made from the semi-precious lapis lazuli stone was mined far away in Afghanistan and cost more than its weight in gold. Only the most illustrious painters were allowed to use the costly material, while lesser artists were forced to use duller colours that faded under the sun. It wasn’t until the industrial revolution in the 19th Century that a synthetic alternative was invented, and true ultramarine blue finally became widely available. During colonisation Maya b...

From - EURO News. Culture . By  Tim Gallagher   Edited by -Vinuri Randhula Silva            The nominees on the Booker Prize list 2022 are up for a £50,000 prize    -               Copyright    Booker Prize The shortlist for the Booker Prize has been announced with the oldest author ever making the cut. If successful, Alan Garner, the only British writer on the list, will collect the prize on his 88th birthday.  The shortlist features his book ‘Treacle Walker’, the story of a young oddball, Joe Coppock, who befriends a wandering healer. The nod comes 55-years after Garner’s first literary award, the Carnegie Medal, for ‘The Owl Service’ The other five nominees are: ‘The Trees’ by American writer Percival Everett; ‘Small Things Like These’ by Irish writer Claire Keegan; ‘Glory’ by Zimbabwean author NoViolet Bulawago; ‘Oh William!’ by American author Elizabeth Strout; an...

  From BBC, Edited by – Vinuri Randhula Silva             IMAGE SOURCE,PA MEDIA            In one letter, Charles Dickens complains about proposed changes to the postal service A batch of unseen and unpublished letters from Charles Dickens, some showing his awareness of his own fame, is being displayed for the first time. The 11 letters reveal the author's reading habits, writing projects and his frustration at the loss of a Sunday postal service. In one he writes he would be "so hampered" he threatens moving away. The letters, among a collection worth £1.8m, have been acquired by the Charles Dickens Museum. In one, dated 10 February 1866, discussing the removal of a Sunday postal service, Dickens says: "I beg to say that I most decidedly and strongly object to the infliction of any such inconvenience upon myself." He refers to the number of letters he receives and sends, saying he would be "so hampered by the proposed r...

From BBC Culture News, By Mark Allison Edited by Vinuri Randhula Silva, Sixty years ago today, both the Beatles' first single Love Me Do and the first Bond film Dr No were released. It was a remarkable moment that redefined a nation, writes Mark Allison. "Sexual intercourse began / In nineteen sixty-three… / Between the end of the 'Chatterley' ban / And the Beatles' first LP." So wrote Philip Larkin in his 1967 poem Annus Mirabilis, reflecting on how British society was transformed in the early 1960s. This was only the beginning of a liberating cultural revolution that would eventually sweep the world, with "swinging" London as its wellspring. Time Magazine correspondent Piri Halasz  captured the mood vividly ; "In a decade dominated by youth, London has burst into bloom. It swings; it is the scene… The city is alive with birds (girls) and Beatles, buzzing with mini cars and telly stars, pulsing with half a dozen separate veins of excitement,...