Category: today’s top story

The 69-year-old, “one of Britain’s best-loved actors, known for his gruff bonhomie, has been working for more than 30 years. He first found fame on the small screen in Dennis Potter’s Pennies from Heaven, and then in cinemas” in such titles as The Long Good Friday, Brazil, Mona Lisa, Mermaids, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit?.

“The priceless treasures of Syria’s history – of Crusader castles, ancient mosques and churches, Roman mosaics, the renowned ‘Dead Cities’ of the north and museums stuffed with antiquities – have fallen prey to looters and destruction by armed rebels and government militias as fighting envelops the country.”

“[He] was one of the most ubiquitous show-business personalities of his generation. … Besides A Chorus Line – one of the most enduring stage musicals of all time – Mr. Hamlisch’s movie portfolio included the inspired revival of Scott Joplin’s jaunty ragtime music for The Sting, the sweepingly romantic theme for The Way We Were and the sensuous ballad ‘Nobody Does It Better’ for the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me. He also wrote music for two early Woody Allen comedies and the score for the Holocaust drama Sophie’s Choice.”

“With a Hemingwayesque build and the distinctively rounded vowels of his native Australia, Mr. Hughes became as familiar a presence on television as he was in print, over three decades for Time magazine, where he was chief art critic and often a traditionalist scourge during an era when art movements fractured into unrecognizability.”

“If you spend time in the literary Twitter- or blogospheres, you’ll be positively besieged by amiability, by a relentless enthusiasm that might have you believing that all new books are wonderful and that every writer is every other writer’s biggest fan. It’s not only shallow, it’s untrue, and it’s having a chilling effect on literary culture, creating an environment where writers are vaunted for their personal biographies or their online followings rather than for their work on the page.”

“Few American writers have been more versatile or gotten more mileage from their talent. He published some 25 novels, two memoirs and several volumes of stylish, magisterial essays. He also wrote plays, television dramas and screenplays. … And he could always be counted on for a spur-of-the-moment aphorism, putdown or sharply worded critique of American foreign policy.”

An investigation in Tablet magazine has found that, in his recent bestseller Imagine: How Creativity Works, Lehrer invented quotes he attributed to Dylan. Publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is recalling the book, and Lehrer has given up his staff writer position at The New Yorker, a post he took just last month.

“More than any other state, Massachusetts has a heritage that runs deep, from the Sons of Liberty to John Singleton Copley and a host of other American masters. But this heritage has been slowly, quietly ransacked. Over the years, countless items have disappeared — and unlike the Cod and the Charter, most have never been seen again.”

“A crooked Manhattan art dealer had a $30 million treasure trove of stolen antiquities that would make Indiana Jones jealous – including ancient carvings and statues swiped from temples in India and other countries, authorities charged yesterday.”