A hospice is giving terminally ill patients the chance to experience the world through virtual reality - just like an episode of hit TV series Black Mirror. Dying patients can enter a virtual world where they can walk on a beach or through woods by wearing a set of high-tech goggles. The exciting opportunity is being offered to terminally ill patients who may be prevented from travelling due to their illness and want to be able to see places they...

There could not be a better time to write a play about revolutionary commitment and individual freedom. Journalist Paul Mason’s piece about working class female communards exiled to New Caledonia on the back of a colonial project for their part in the 1871 Parisian uprising asks hard questions about what happens to personal freedom and culpability when revolutions are defeated. Mason has drawn on three sources for this almost biographical work focused on anarchist, feminist, teacher, ethnographer and revolutionary Louise...

By Jay Williams  Arriving early, I mooched around outside new Farringdon rib joint Hammer & Tongs just long enough to hear a member of staff outside muttering darkly into his mobile “we’ve got a reviewer coming in again tonight”.  Kind of how you might expect one of the three little pigs to say “we’ve got a wolf popping round again this evening”.  But after returning to our table later, a quick Google revealed the restaurant had recently been rinsed by...

On May 20th and 21st the British Library will be transformed as the ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival animates its iconic spaces for the first time in celebration of this cultural partnership. The British Library will present a sumptuous showcase of South Asia's literary heritage, oral and performing arts, music, cinema and illusion, books and ideas, dialogue and debate, Bollywood and politics in the context of this broader view of India and its relationship to the United Kingdon.2017 marks the fourth...

On a personal note, a stored image returns to the forefront of my thoughts as summoned by the reading of Bill Hayes' achingly beautiful memoir Insomniac City. It is a February night in 2010, a Toronto winter considering an early spring, a night four hours' distant from consideration of a whispering dawn. I am stood outside an all-hours McDonald's smoking the fifth cigarette of the first pack after I had given up quitting. My eyes followed the mix of smoke...

Night after night the misery of war is pumped out across our TV screens, our social media and on the pages of our newspapers, and yet, even in the face of war, people are driven to show extraordinary acts of courage and humanity. Like Antonina and Jan Zabinski, the keepers of the Warsaw Zoo who helped to save hundreds of people and animals during the German invasion and whose story is told in the film The Zookeeper's Wife that was...

This is the bizarre moment a Mission Impossible-style raider was caught on CCTV crawling across the floor of a village pub during a late night burglary. The crook was seen wriggling between bar stools and tables to avoid triggering the alarm system in the third break-in at the pub in 18 months. The latest raid took place at Smithy’s Marina Bar in Shardlow, Derbys., just before 3am on Wednesday (26/4). The thief used tools to force open the door and...

The Liberal Democrats chances of mounting a serious General Election challenge have been cast in doubt following revelations that they have already come a cropper in two seats. Following the announcement by Daisy Benson that she would run for the party in Yeovil, the LibDem candidate stood down because: “Although I’ve been preparing for the past year, this election unfortunately comes at precisely the wrong time for me. I’m just in the process of completing purchasing a house.” Yeovil is a key...

Richmond Virginia's Municipal Waste are back with their latest piece of toxic detritus, Slime And Punishment. Their sixth album will be released on June 23rd via Nuclear Blast Records. Ryan Waste states, "We've been getting punished for the last five years by people asking for a new album. Now we're here to return the favour with an aural onslaught of speed metal punk. Enjoy a taste of slime courtesy of the Waste." Slime And Punishment is the first Waste album to be...