Hieronymus Bosch born Jheronimus van Aken c. 1450 – 9 August 1516) was an Early Netherlandish painter. His work is known for its fantastic imagery, detailed landscapes, and illustrations of religious concepts and narratives. Within his lifetime his work was collected in the Netherlands, Austria, and Spain, and widely copied, especially his macabre and nightmarish depictions of hell. Little is known of Bosch's life, though there are some records. He spent most of it in the town of 's-Hertogenbosch, where he was born in his grandfather's house. The roots of his forefathers are in Aachen, in present-day Germany. His pessimistic and fantastical style cast a wide influence on northern art of the 16th century, with Pieter Bruegel the Elder being his best known follower. His paintings have been difficult to translate from a modern point of view; attempts to associate instances of modern sexual imagery with fringe sects or the occult have largely failed. Today he is seen as a hugely individualistic painter with deep insight into humanity's desires and deepest fears. Attribution has been especially difficult; today only about 25 paintings are confidently given to his hand along with 8 drawings. Approximately another half dozen paintings are confidently attributed to his workshop. His most acclaimed works consist of a few triptych altarpieces, the most outstanding of which is The Garden of Earthly Delights more 

The Glass Menagerie, Edinburgh Festival, review: Real emotional punch After the triumph of his work on Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in the West End, John Tiffany revives his acclaimed 2013 Broadway production of Tennessee Williams' classic for the Edinburgh International Festival, and how welcome it is. At the heart of this production is a superlative performance by Cherry Jones as Amanda Wingfield, the over-attentive mother of budding poet Tom and the crippled Laura (Kate O'Flynn), living on memories of her Southern Belle past as the family are cooped up in a tiny St Louis apartment in the 1930s. The cold-hearted Tom (Michael Esper) plots his escape but there will be none for the women, beautifully represented in Bob Crowley's simple but evocative set by a fire escape that zigzags off into nowhere. Tiffany allows the languor of their lives to roll over us in the first act as the family squabble and there is mention of the feckless absent father whose drinking habits Tom appears to have inherited, but in the second, when he brings home colleague Jim (Seth Numrich) as a “gentleman caller” for Laura, the tone and pace change more 

‘Rolling Coal’ in Diesel Trucks, to Rebel and Provoke MONTROSE, Colo. — There is a new menace on America’s roads: diesel truck drivers who soup up their engines and remove their emissions controls to “roll coal,” or belch black smoke, at pedestrians, cyclists and unsuspecting Prius drivers. Sgt. Chris Worthington of the Montrose Police Department here is out to stop them. “You can hear those trucks across town, driving like idiots,” he said on a recent Friday evening patrol. He is among the first law enforcement officers in the country to be trained at “smoke school” to pick up the skills to police the coal rollers. He lost sight of one truck cruising in the opposite direction, trailing plumes of smoke. But another, a Ram 3500 fitted with two steel smokestacks, was parked in a Walmart parking lot. The owner, Pryce Hoey, insisted his truck was emissions compliant, but nevertheless agreed to demonstrate its smoke-generating prowess. “I just wanted something different,” Mr. Hoey said, revving the engine and releasing two black pillars of smoke into the evening air before Sgt. Worthington shut him down. “People who see it giggle. They think it’s funny.” more 

How to restart democratic debate in Syria? Launch a version of The Archers As politicians agonise about the wisdom of intervention in Syria, I have been involved in a somewhat smaller project but with big aspirations to help restart a democratic dialogue in the country. Hay El-Matar – which translates as airport district, because every Syrian city has one whether it has an airport or not – is a radio drama series, produced by the BBC’s non-licence fee international development arm but written by Syrians for Syrians. It will air across Syria from this week for at least a year, all for a fraction of the price of a cruise missile. Just as The Archers was originally conceived as a means of educating post-rationing Brits about agriculture (and as this week’s domestic abuse trial proves has achieved much more than that), Hay El-Matar is a three times-weekly drama series with the principal objective of humanising “the other”– whether Shia, Sunni, Armenian Christian or Alawite – and demonstrating that they aren’t so different more

Greater Sydney Commission spending $524,000 on social media The agency charged with reshaping the city, the Greater Sydney Commission, is spending more than half a million dollars on social media consultants, drawing heavy criticism from the state opposition. The amount of spending on social media was highlighted at a budget estimates hearing on Wednesday, where it also emerged the Lucy Turnbull-chaired commission had cancelled a planned "major event to bring Sydneysiders together to talk about strategic planning" more 

Here are 2016's earliest sightings of resident and common migrant butterflies, as reported to Butterfly Conservation. A small influx of Painted Lady butterflies has arrived during the very mild recent weather and an early Speckled Wood has emerged. If you have seen a butterfly in 2016 that is not yet listed below, and you are confident that you have identified it correctly, please email our Surveys Manager with details of your sighting. You can follow all the latest sightings, as they happen more

The Sky at Night 2016 This page, updated monthly, will let you know some of the things that you can look out for in the night sky.  It lists the phases of the Moon, where you will see the naked-eye planets and describes some of the prominent constellations in the night sky during the month more

HMRC takes £50m in credit card fees on tax payments HMRC has charged taxpayers £50m to pay their taxes by credit card over the past five years, figures collected by Telegraph Money show. The statistics, which were obtained from a Freedom of Information request, show that almost 500,000 payments were made to the taxman by credit card in 2014-15, producing more than £12m in commission more

Proof that women's clothing sizes are bizarre and inconsistent A reporter tried on three different pairs of pants in the same size and three different stores The world of sizes for women's clothes is bizarre. A woman could wear a size 2 in one brand's apparel, but a 6 in another. In June, a woman posted a letter to H&M, which went viral, for not being able to fit into its size 16 jeans ... while wearing a size medium shirt. In a recent video for Vox, a reporter tried on three different pairs of pants in the same size and three different stores — Zara, Topshop, and Forever 21 — to prove that this theory was true. Then, Vox set to find out why more

Housing crisis ‘driving younger and older generations apart’ Soaring property prices are making more neighbourhoods inaccessible to the under 50s, report reveals Britain is becoming more segregated due to high house prices, a report reveals, as it emerged that the number of new “social rent” homes funded by the government fell to fewer than 10,000 last year. Official figures show that 70% fewer social rent homes, where rents are capped, came on to the market in 2014-15 compared with five years earlier at the end of the Labour government. An additional 40,000 “affordable rent” properties also became available, but at up to 80% of the market rate – considerably higher than for social housing. The consequence of escalating rents and the lack of discounted homes has been greater segregation in society, according to a new report from the Intergenerational Foundation (IF). The number of neighbourhoods in which half the population is aged over 50 has risen sevenfold – from 65 in 1991 to 485 in 2014 more

Human Brain Map Gets a Bold New Update The new Allen Brain Atlas combines neuroimaging and tissue staining to offer an unprecedented level of resolution. Most of us think little of hopping on Google Maps to look at everything from a bird’s-eye view of an entire continent to an on-the-ground view of a specific street, all carefully labeled. Thanks to a digital atlas published this week, the same is now possible with the human brain. Ed Lein and colleagues at the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle have created a comprehensive, open-access digital atlas of the human brain, which was published this week in The Journal of Comparative Neurology. “Essentially what we were trying to do is to create a new reference standard for a very fine anatomical structural map of the complete human brain,” says Lein, the principal investigator on the project. “It may seem a little bit odd, but actually we are a bit lacking in types of basic reference materials for mapping the human brain that we have in other organisms like mouse or like monkey, and that is in large part because of the enormous size and complexity of the human brain.” more

America’s leading playwright Edward Albee, the author of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? – the bleakest of black domestic comedies – has died aged 88 at his home in Montauk, East Hampton. His shocking play about a decaying academic marriage marked him out early as what the New York Times has called this weekend “the playwright of a desperate generation”. A critical success on Broadway in 1962, it is still well known due to Mike Nichols’ 1966 film adaptation, which starred another dysfunctional couple, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. Speaking to the Observer, the actor Tim Piggott-Smith, who played the lead male role in the play on the British stage two years ago, praised the “visceral emotionality” of Albee’s writing. “He had an absolutely astounding bravery and he was able to just pour it out. He lived to a good age, but it is very sad,” he said more