A theatrical sensation since the 1960s, whose dramas included Arcadia, The Real Thing and Leopoldstadt, Stoppard also had huge success as a screenwriter The playwright Tom Stoppard, whose playful erudition dazzled the theatregoing world for decades, has died aged 88. One of a select band of writers from any discipline to earn his own adjective – “Stoppardian” – in the Oxford English Dictionary, he delighted in the most improbable juxtapositions: philosophy and gymnastics in Jumpers (1972); early 19th-century landscape gardening and chaos theory in Arcadia (1993); rock music, dissident Czech academics and the love poetry of Sappho in Rock ’n’ Roll (2006). Continue reading...

Having discovered a 17th-century ancestor, Dame Judi Dench embarks on a hopeful search for links to the Bard.

ALT: a chalkboard with the words back to school on it

YouTube video by Anachronistic Anarchist

Quilt, made in 1980s to raise awareness, to be shown as US cuts raise fears of Aids resurgence in some countries