David Hockney slams plans to bring Bayeux Tapestry to UK as ‘madness’

David Hockney, one of the UK’s greatest painters, has made a dramatic intervention to try to stop a plan to bring the Bayeux Tapestry to the UK, over fears it could be irreparably damaged.

The priceless 11th-century work, which depicts the Norman conquest in 1066, is set to be transported from Bayeux in Normandy, France, where it has been on display for many centuries, to be shown at the British Museum as part of a nine-month exhibition set to attract millions of visitors.

The 70-metre-long medieval relic, which is said to be insured for £800m by the UK government during the loan, was hailed as a “unique treasure” by prime minister Sir Keir Starmer. The fragile cloth depicts 58 scenes of the battle in which William the Conqueror took the English throne from Harold Godwinson and became the first Norman king of England.

But writing exclusively in The Independent, Hockney has lambasted the plan, describing the proposal to move the fragile, 1,000-year-old artefact as “madness” and “too big a risk” to take.

“The 58 narrative scenes have been observed in Bayeux for nearly a millennium,” he wrote, adding the tapestry had “survived political upheaval and wars” but now faces an “unnecessary conservation ordeal”.

“While moving the Bayeux Tapestry to the UK might have vanity and symbolic educational value, the physical and environmental risks are substantial,” Hockney continued.

He hit out at the “reckless” nature of moving what he called a “historic and important” work, branding the British Museum’s plan as carrying “significant risk”.

“Why does a London museum which prides itself on conserving and preserving great art want to gamble on the survival of the most important art image of scale in Europe?” he asked. “It is madness. I am not afraid to speak up for art. It is something that has defined my life for more than eight decades.”

Mr Hockney said the world-renowned tapestry, which is one of nearly 600 items on Unesco’s Memory of the World register, is at risk of damage as soon as it leaves the “tightly controlled” conditions of Bayeux.

He listed risks from sudden changes in temperature, humidity or light exposure, which can lead to fibre contraction or expansion or colour fading. Backed on fragile linen, any movement of the relic’s wool embroidery threads puts it in danger of “tearing, stitch loss and distortion of the fabric”.

Increased exposure while it is exhibited in the UK could also lead the precious tapestry to fade and become vulnerable, according to Mr Hockney.

He questioned why experts are considering moving the work, accusing the British Museum of wanting to “boast of numbers of visitors”.

“Is it really worth it?” he asked. “I think not. I suggest it stays, and there is a proper debate about it being moved.”

Hockney’s warning comes as controversy over foreign ownership of ancient and significant artworks grows. The British Museum has faced frequent criticism for its right to hold treasures taken from other countries in the colonial heyday of the British Empire, including the Elgin Marbles from Greece and the Rosetta Stone from Egypt.

The artwork, which has not been on British soil since it was created in the years after the Battle of Hastings, has been described by British Museum director Nicholas Cullinan as “one of the most important and unique cultural artefacts in the world”.

There have been three previous British requests for the historic treasure to be loaned to the UK, none of which has been successful. But as the tapestry’s purpose-built home, the Bayeux Museum in northern France, undergoes renovation, a loan has been agreed in a historic first.

It comes as part of a cultural exchange in which the British Museum will lend the Sutton Hoo collection, the Lewis Chessmen and other items to France in return.

But the loan of the artefact has raised alarm from heritage experts over the ancient embroidery’s already fragile state. More than 40,000 people signed a petition in August to prevent it coming to the UK, with art historian Didier Rykner expressing concerns that the tapestry could be damaged.

At the time, the British Museum said its conservation and collections management team was experienced at handling and caring for this type of material and was working with colleagues in France on the tapestry’s display.

NASA sends 4 astronauts back to Earth in first medical evacuation

An astronaut in need of doctors’ care departed the International Space Station with three crewmates on Wednesday in NASA’s first medical evacuation.

The four returning astronauts — from the U.S., Russia and Japan — are aiming for an early Thursday morning splashdown in the Pacific near San Diego with SpaceX. The decision cuts short their mission by over a month.

“Our timing of this departure is unexpected,” NASA astronaut Zena Cardman said before the return trip, “but what was not surprising to me was how well this crew came together as a family to help each other and just take care of each other.”

Officials refused to identify the astronaut who needed care last week and would not divulge the health concerns.

The ailing astronaut is “stable, safe and well cared for,” outgoing space station commander Mike Fincke said earlier this week via social media. “This was a deliberate decision to allow the right medical evaluations to happen on the ground, where the full range of diagnostic capability exists.”

Launched in August, Cardman, Fincke, Japan’s Kimiya Yui and Russia’s Oleg Platonov should have remained on the space station until late February. But on Jan. 7, NASA abruptly canceled the next day’s spacewalk by Cardman and Fincke and later announced the crew’s early return. Officials said the health problem was unrelated to spacewalk preparations or other station operations, but offered no other details, citing medical privacy. They stressed it was not an emergency situation.

NASA said it would stick to the same entry and splashdown procedures at flight’s end, with the usual assortment of medical experts aboard the recovery ship in the Pacific. It was another middle-of-the-night crew return for SpaceX, coming less than 11 hours after undocking from the space station. NASA said it was not yet known how quickly all four would be flown from California to Houston, home to Johnson Space Center and the base for astronauts.

One U.S. and two Russian astronauts remain aboard the orbiting lab, just 1 1/2 months into an eight-month mission that began with a Soyuz rocket liftoff from Kazakhstan. NASA and SpaceX are working to move up the launch of a fresh four-person crew from Florida, currently targeted for mid-February.

Computer modeling predicted a medical evacuation from the space station every three years, but NASA hasn’t had one in its 65 years of human spaceflight. The Russians have not been as fortunate. In 1985, Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Vasyutin came down with a serious infection or related illness aboard his country’s Salyut 7 space station, prompting an early return. A few other Soviet cosmonauts encountered less serious health issues that shortened their flights.

It was the first spaceflight for Cardman, a 38, biologist and polar explorer who missed out on spacewalking, as well as Platonov, 39, a former fighter pilot with the Russian Air Force who had to wait a few extra years to get to space because of an undisclosed health issue. Cardman should have launched last year but was bumped to make room on the way down for NASA’s Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who were stuck nearly a year at the space station because of Boeing’s capsule problems.

Fincke, 58, a retired Air Force colonel, and Yui, 55, a retired fighter pilot with the Japan Air Self-Defense Force, were repeat space fliers. Finke has spent 1 1/2 years in orbit over four missions and conducted nine spacewalks on previous flights, making him one of NASA’s top performers. Last week, Yui celebrated his 300th day in space over two station stays, sharing stunning views of Earth, including Japan’s Mount Fuji and breathtaking auroras.

“I want to burn it firmly into my eyes, and even more so, into my heart,” Yui said on the social platform X. “Soon, I too will become one of those small lights on the ground.”

NASA officials had said it was riskier to leave the astronaut in space without proper medical attention for another month than to temporarily reduce the size of the space station crew by more than half. Until SpaceX delivers another crew, NASA said it will have to stand down from any routine or even emergency spacewalks, a two-person job requiring backup help from crew inside the orbiting complex.

The medical evacuation was the first major decision by NASA’s new administrator Jared Isaacman. The billionaire founder of a payment processing company and two-time space flier assumed the agency’s top job in December.

“The health and the well-being of our astronauts is always and will be our highest priority,” Isaacman said in announcing the decision last week.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Three Palestine Action activists end hunger strikes after 73 days

Three Palestine Action activists have had ended their hunger strike in prison after 73 days, claiming the Government has met one of their key demands.

Kamran Ahmed, Heba Muraisi and Lewie Chiaramello began “re-feeding” on Wednesday, campaign group Prisoners for Palestine said. The group have said the Government denied Israeli-based defence firm Elbit Systems a £2 billion contract, which they said was “a key demand of the hunger strikers”.

The hunger strike participants are in prison awaiting trial for alleged break-ins or criminal damage on behalf of Palestine Action before the group was banned under terrorism legislation – charges which they deny and have called to be dropped.

Prisoners for Palestine said that national leaders of prison healthcare met representatives of the hunger strike prisoners on Friday to discuss prison conditions and treatment recommendations.

The last remaining hunger striker is Umer Khalid, according to Prisoners for Palestine’s website.

Prisoners for Palestine said in a statement: “While these prisoners end their hunger strike, the resistance has just begun.

“Banning a group and imprisoning our comrades has backfired on the British state, direct action is alive and the people will drive Elbit out of Britain for good”.

Chiaramello said it was a “time for celebration” as their demands had been met.

“It is definitely a time for celebration. A time to rejoice and to embrace our joy as revolution and as liberation,” they said. “We do this because of Palestine, because we’ve been inspired, because we’ve been empowered to take action and to try to realise our dreams for a free Palestine, for an emancipated world.”

They said that alongside the three who ended their strike on Wednesday, Teuta Hoxha, Jon Cink, Qesser Zuhrah, and Amu Gib “have now all begun re-feeding in accordance with health guidelines”.

Since the hunger strike began on 2 November, several prisoners have been taken to hospital.

The Press Association has approached the Ministry of Justice for comment.

Zelensky to declare state of emergency over Putin’s attacks on energy grid

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky says he will declare a state of emergency in the energy sector to make up for lost time in tackling disrupted power supplies following sustained Russian attacks on the country’s infrastructure.

Crews are making round-the-clock efforts to restore power and heating supplies thrown into disarray, particularly in Kyiv, last week.

Repairs to thousands of apartment blocks have been compounded by frigid weather, with night-time temperatures dipping close to -20C (-4F).

The president said not enough had been done to deal with the aftermath of the attacks and the state of emergency would allow authorities “more options and flexibility”.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s new defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov has revealed that around two million Ukrainians are wanted for evading mobilisation while 200,000 soldiers are awol (absent without official leave), .

Mr Fedorov has promised to revolutionise the country’s armed forces as it faces a critical manpower shortage. According to the Criminal Code of Ukraine, evading mobilisation is punishable by imprisonment of three to five years in wartime.

Arsenal provide brutal reality check to new Chelsea boss Rosenior

It was one of those games, even amid a needlessly relentless period of football, where you can see certain storylines coming together.

Above all, Arsenal’s 3-2 win at Stamford Bridge goes some way to setting up the first of a possible series of showdowns with Manchester City for trophies. They each have a foot in the Carabao Cup final.

Newcastle United and Chelsea may yet have something to say about that, but the latter will have to improve on this display. It was a tough first home match for Liam Rosenior, even if Mikel Arteta will rightly be livid that Arsenal did not just completely shut this game out. The nature of Alejandro Garnacho’s two goals will only make that worse. It was a bizarrely close end scoreline, when it often felt like it could have been a 4-1.

That represented an encouraging display of spirit from Rosenior’s side, even if they have a lot to do tactically.

Arsenal’s frustrations will be all the deeper since they often had Chelsea at a comfortable arm’s length after initially pressing them so intensely that Rosenior’s side just couldn’t get out. That was the real difference between the sides and really shows the amount of work that the young coach has to do. That is the level he really has to get Chelsea to.

From that, there was of course a corner, from which Arsenal of course scored. The only surprise was that it was Ben White heading it in, rather than Gabriel.

That is maybe where there is a bigger question, too. For a change that was supposed to bring an element of tactical continuity, Chelsea looked disconnected. It took them a long time to figure out that press. They struggled to play out in the way Enzo Maresca had managed against Arsenal in November, for a 1-1 draw that was certainly much closer in general play than this 3-2.

There were about 10 minutes when Declan Rice seemed to be winning absolutely everything right in front of the Chelsea area.

It didn’t help that there was a longer spell when Robert Sanchez seemed to be winning almost nothing in his own area. Purposeful as White was for the goal, the goalkeeper did not come for it with authority. He found himself crowded out.

Worse was the second goal. After what was one of a few slick Arsenal attacks, White this time played the ball in. Viktor Gyokeres was getting there in a way he has been criticised for not doing in the Premier League, but he might have this time been too eager as the ball looked like it would end up behind him.

Instead, Sanchez’s intervention played it right into his path, for the beleaguered striker to hammer the ball in from a yard.

You could sense the pent-up agitation in the finish. Gyokeres even briefly did his mask celebration, only to think better of it.

He needed that. You could see it in his teammates’ celebrations.

Rosenior needed some kind of response, or else this first home match had the look of one that was a proper reality check. There were boos at half-time. Fans were singing about co-owner Behdad Eghbali not being welcome at the club.

Had Arsenal gone on to win in the convincing manner they threatened, there probably would have been more discussion about Chelsea needlessly blowing up their season.

That wouldn’t have been to doubt Rosenior’s ability or even the possibility that he can be a great Chelsea manager, but more about the short-term challenges when they had been in a broadly positive position.In maybe the most significant development of the night for the club, though, Rosenior got that response. His substitution paid off. Garnacho set off, and Chelsea dug in.

They were aided by an element of fortuitousness to both goals, as they capitalised on an usual fractiousness in Arsenal’s backline for a strong side. Kepa Arrizabalaga may have been booed by fans of his former club but he was solid. Garnacho, however, was precise.

He took his two chances well. In between, in what might end up the real difference maker, Martin Zubimendi scored a goal that showed the difference between the teams in another way.

Arsenal just surged through Chelsea in a way that had Arteta purring.Gyokeres also did his bit in another way, as he held the ball up and laid it off for Zubimendi. The Spanish midfielder took a touch, checked himself, then finished superbly.

From that, it could be argued Gyokeres had his best all-round game in some time. The scoreline still should have been better for Arsenal. The game could have been a lot worse for Chelsea.

There were consequently a few notes of encouragement for Rosenior, amid so many displays of the work he has to do.

The game ended with the coaches actually having to separate Zubimendi and Enzo Fernandez. Chelsea are going to need a lot more fight in the second leg.

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Leonardo DiCaprio’s viral ‘personality reveal’ wasn’t the mask-slip everybody thinks

They say no man is an island – even if, like Leonardo DiCaprio, they own their own private one. But is that really true? There has always been something remote about the 51-year-old star of Titanic and One Battle After Another. It’s a mystique that Golden Globes host Nikki Glaser touched on at last weekend’s awards ceremony, after cracking wise about DiCaprio’s age-gap dating history. “I’m sorry I made that joke,” she said. “It’s cheap. I tried not to, but like… we don’t know anything else about you, man. There’s nothing else. Like open up. I’m serious. I looked. I searched. The most in-depth interview you’ve ever given was in Teen Beat magazine in 1991. Is your favourite food still pasta, pasta, and more pasta?”

She’s not wrong: even by movie-star standards, DiCaprio remains more or less a complete cipher off-screen. We know he supports the LA Lakers. We know he likes the environment. (His private Caribbean island, Blackadore Caye, is said to house something called a luxury “eco-resort”.) But what else? Does he have a sense of humour? Does he have a Netflix account? Does he doomscroll into the wee hours? Beyond his aforementioned dating history (about which only the vaguest details ever really surface), the only solid narratives around DiCaprio are professional ones. For years, he was defined by his fruitless – even, as popular logic had it, desperate – pursuit of an Academy Award: the decades-long snubbing became a meme in and of itself. After missing out on the prize for films such as What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? (1993), The Aviator (2004) and The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), DiCaprio finally exorcised that demon with 2015’s The Revenant, now best remembered as the film in which an incessantly gurning Leo gets mauled by a bear and eats raw bison liver.

The bizarre intensity of DiCaprio’s process there – the madness to his Method, as it were – seemed to play into all the actorly preconceptions about him, the idea of him as an obliviously self-serious thesp. It is this reputation that might explain the virality of the Golden Globes’ big social media moment: a candid clip in which Leo, seated, can be seen flamboyantly gesticulating to another award-goer (speculated, by online sleuths, to be One Battle co-star Teyana Taylor), while mouthing about K-pop. Fans revelled in DiCaprio’s almost unprecedented display of offscreen exuberance, with some suggesting that his usual buttoned-down professionalism was “a performance”. This, they claimed, was a rare glimpse at his “real personality”.

In truth, though, the question ought not to be “is this the real DiCaprio?” but, instead, “Why do we care so much?” The hankering for insight into celebrities’ personal lives is nothing new, naturally – as long as there has been a film industry, there have been tabloid journalists and biographers growing fat from veil-lifting reportage and gossip trafficking – but in the age of social media, it has metastasised into a rather more particular fascination with micro-behaviours. People don’t want dirt so much as they want access, often to the most banal crevices of celebrity life. And the more that access is withheld, the more tantalising it becomes.

Increasingly, as happened with DiCaprio’s viral moment, fans are also turning to lip-reading to analyse even the subtlest private aside – and awards shows are a particular nexus for TikTok’s Lip-reading Industrial Complex. In recent years, figures such as Taylor Swift and Selena Gomez have gone viral thanks to inaudible interactions at the Globes, with fans scrutinising every (entirely hypothetical) phoneme on social media to unearth supposed slights. There’s not really much that celebs can do about it either, short of covering their mouths with their hands like all those ridiculous-looking Premier League footballers. As long as they attend these events, there will be cameras. And as long as there are cameras, people will be watching – all too closely.

When it comes to the attentions of social media, there is something particularly alluring about DiCaprio, a man who has juggled an intense personal privacy with outsized screen personas that are quintessential meme material. (The shot of him in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, seated in an armchair and pointing ecstatically at a TV screen, has to rank among the most enduring internet memes in history.) But let’s be clear, there’s a big difference between a flash of awards-do ostentation, and actual transparency. That is to say, I wouldn’t bank on DiCaprio launching a personable curtain-lifting podcast any time soon. (“Leo Season”, anyone? “Chatter Island?”)

No, all that Golden Globes clip really revealed is that DiCaprio knows how to turn on the charm when required. An actor with charisma – who knew?! As for the “real Leonardo DiCaprio”, that’s anyone’s guess. But boy, are we going to keep guessing.

‘Complete shambles’: Exasperated Labour MPs lash out at Starmer over digital ID U-turn

Labour MPs are questioning whether Sir Keir Starmer can hold on to power after he performed yet another U-turn as prime minister by ditching plans for mandatory digital ID.

The government has reversed course on policy issues at least 11 times so far, including by raising the inheritance tax relief threshold for farmers after months of protest and scrapping a raft of benefits cuts under the threat of a backbench revolt.

The latest decision comes amid growing concern over the direction of Sir Keir’s beleaguered Labour government in the face of disastrous approval ratings, with the prime minister facing mounting questions about his position.

Sir Keir last year said Labour would introduce a digital ID system that would be voluntary in most cases but mandatory for right-to-work checks. However, these plans were thrown into confusion on Tuesday night after it emerged that ministers were looking at rowing back on the compulsory element, allowing other digital documents to be used for right-to-work checks.

The U-turn, which has sparked a fresh wave of criticism from Labour backbenchers who believe the prime minister’s position is at risk, came just hours after health secretary Wes Streeting told a conference in London that the government should aim to “get it right first time”.

One despairing minister told The Independent: “Nobody knows what is going to happen next or what we are even doing.”

A senior Labour backbencher added: “It just feels like the government is in freefall at the moment. It is a complete shambles. It feels like this government is just holding on until May, and hoping that they can get through the moment of danger and things somehow turn around.”

Another MP said: “I keep being told to wait until the local elections in May, but increasingly I wonder what the point of that is.”

“It’s quite obvious No 10 have totally lost touch with reality,” another MP said of the U-turn. “One might have thought they were learning on the job. But their decision-making and policy development strategy is going from really bad to alarmingly inadequate.”

The MP expressed their belief that the prime minister will “fall on his sword” after what is expected to be a disastrous result for Labour at the local elections.

“A leadership contest has been on the cards for some time now. It’s widely accepted within the [parliamentary Labour Party] now. However, it’s a political game of chess – who makes the next move.”

Meanwhile, there has been vocal criticism of the attempt to revive Sir Tony Blair’s failed mandatory ID policy.

Norwich South MP Clive Lewis said: “This is the sort of thing a government tries to do at the height of its powers, not when it is struggling in the polls. If people trusted it on foreign policy and the economy, then it might have been able to say, ‘We are doing this in your best interests.’

“But these were badly designed plans in the first place. An unnecessary fight. And of course, it was always going to trigger the libertarian right.”

It came after former Labour home secretary David Blunkett fiercely criticised the U-turn, arguing that the government had been forced to abandon the scheme because it had failed to convince people of why it was a good idea after announcing it last year.

In a damning indictment of the prime minister, Lord Blunkett told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Very sadly it is an indication of the failure to be able to annunciate why this policy mattered, to follow through with the detail of how it would work, and reinforce that by a plan of action. When you fail to do all those things, it’s not surprising in the end that the thing runs into the sand.”

Lord Blunkett, who first proposed ID cards in 2002 as a cabinet minister in Sir Tony’s administration, said he was “disappointed but not surprised”.

He said the original announcement was “not followed by a narrative, or supportive statements, or any kind of strategic plan which involves other ministers, and those who are committed to this, actually making the case”.

But Sir Tony’s think tank, which championed the introduction of digital ID, said the U-turn is “a change in approach, not a change in direction”.

Sir Tony himself tried to introduce mandatory ID cards during his time in Downing Street, but was forced to water down the policy to a voluntary scheme that was then scrapped by the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition.

Ryan Wain, executive director of policy and politics at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, said: “Removing mandatory digital ID from right-to-work checks is a change in approach, not a change in direction.

“Digital identity remains essential if we want public services that work in the way people now expect, with less friction, fewer forms, and services that actually join up. The real test isn’t whether people are forced to use it, but whether it’s good enough that they choose to.”

He added: “If digital ID makes everyday interactions with the state easier, faster and more personalised, people will choose it. Getting the design and rollout right is how you build public trust, and it’s the foundation for genuinely modernising public services.”

The mandatory ID card scheme was announced by the prime minister last September in a blaze of publicity, and was presented as a major weapon in the campaign to curb immigration. Sir Keir said at the time: “Let me spell that out: you will not be able to work in the UK if you do not have digital ID. It is as simple as that.”

But support for the policy collapsed in the wake of Sir Keir’s announcement, falling from 53 per cent in June to just 31 per cent in October.

Government sources say the scheme will now be optional when it is introduced in 2029, with workers given the option of using other means to verify their identity.

Defending the decision to water down plans for mandatory digital ID as he faced fire in the Commons over the U-turn, Sir Keir insisted there “will be checks” on the right to work in the UK, arguing: “They will be digital, and they will be mandatory.”