Letter written hours before her execution in 1587 will form part of exhibition and programme of events in Perth aiming to bring queen’s story to life

A letter written by Mary, Queen of Scots hours before her execution in 1587 will go on display for the first time in nearly a decade when it forms part of an exhibition in Perth next year.

Mary wrote what is believed to be her last letter at 2am on Wednesday 8 February 1587 when she wrote to her brother-in-law Henri III in France to put her affairs in order. She was executed six hours later at Fotheringhay Castle in Northamptonshire .

• Chloe Kelly and Hannah Hampton make the shortlist

• McIlroy, Littler, Norris and Kildunne also up for award

England team-mates Chloe Kelly and Hannah Hampton are up against one another for the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award on a shortlist that also includes Lando Norris, Rory McIlroy, Luke Littler and Ellie Kildunne.

Kelly and Hampton were at the centre of England’s dramatic penalty shootout win over Spain in the Euro 2025 final , with Kelly scoring the winning spot-kick after Hampton had made two critical saves. For Kelly, it came after a difficult period personally, but after leaving Manchester City for Arsenal within months she was a European champion and Champions League winner. Hampton’s heroics saw the Chelsea stopper win the Yashin Trophy for the world’s best female goalkeeper at the Ballon d’Or awards.

Even the ridiculous product placement isn’t the most cynical thing about this exercise in trading in Cosy British Christmascore. It’s a nauseatingly schmaltzy and nonsensical

Trevor Bingley is not Mr Bean, but the two have a few things in common. For a start, they are both self-destructively single-minded when it comes to overcoming trivial annoyances. In Netflix’s 2022 series Man vs Bee , Bingley ended up building a fake explosive-laced hive to destroy the insect who refused to vacate the swish home he was house-sitting; for Bean, life consists almost exclusively of finding absurd solutions to minor problems. Both are pitiable figures: Bean because he’s a walking disaster zone; Bingley because he’s lonely and broke, having lost numerous jobs due to general ineptitude. Last but not least, they are both embodied by Rowan Atkinson, who bestows the pair with his distinctive brand of sprightly ungainliness.

There are major differences, however. Bingley is a human who can talk, is aware of social niceties and has a backstory, which mainly features a teenage daughter he dotes on and gratingly refers to as “Sweetpea”. Bean, on the other hand, was essentially beamed in from space: some episodes of the original 1990s series open with him dropping from the sky bathed in an alien light source.

In her complex works, the Polish artist manipulates images of male nudes to comment on masculine power-plays and female emancipation

To give people a sense of her evolution, the lauded Polish artist Zofia Kulik likes to compare two of her creative milestones. The first was the centrepiece of her earliest exhibition as a solo artist in 1989 , where she debuted her groundbreaking, technically complex photomontages in which dizzying patterns are woven from repeating imagery. It’s a self-portrait where she peers uncertainly from a mandala made from tiny posturing male nudes, “pressed in by men” as Kulik puts it.

The second was made nearly a decade later in 1997, the year that that artistic leap into the unknown was given the ultimate public affirmation and she represented her country at the Venice Biennale. This time she’s an assertive queen, posed like Elizabeth I, resplendent with a ruff, wide-skirted and sleeved gown, embellished with decorative patterns of those naked men.

I’ve spent too many wet and windy Friday afternoons preparing set-piece routines and it’s not a pretty sight

By Nutmeg magazine

Set pieces, eh, those brief but frequent interludes that sporadically pockmark our weekly sacrament, filling our heads with daydreams and fantasies of intricately worked ruses or 30-yard thunderbolts. Quite often the unintentional birth child of an ugly hacked clearance or theatrical swan dive, they ordinarily result in nothing more than a rudimentary blemish upon hallowed turf canvas but, sometimes, just sometimes, we are treated to strokes of genius that become as entrenched in the memory as is the Lord’s Prayer.

When asked to provide a dose of professional insight detailing the fastidious workings that go into each and every single stoppage in play, it got me to thinking: have we lost an element of ingenuity in the pursuit of perfection? My dad has always warned me against the pitfalls of starting a game slowly so, with that pearl of wisdom well heeded, I’ll get things under way with a bang, a no-nonsense punt into touch from the very first whistle, the sort that’s recently stormed back into fashion within the upper echelons of the English game, as world-renowned coaches such as Pep Guardiola and Mikel Arteta do their damndest at reinventing a century-old wheel.

At the scene of one of his Europa League final triumphs, the manager is setting targets to achieve success with Villa

For Unai Emery, there was a welcome air of familiarity upon arrival at Basel’s St Jakob-Park on Wednesday. It was a return to Switzerland and the scene of his third Europa League triumph with Sevilla in 2016, when his side overcame Jürgen Klopp’s Liverpool, 3-1.

“This competition is so, so special for me,” the Aston Villa manager said. “We won here, it was a fantastic day and is a fantastic memory. To remember it is very good.” And then came a big but. Two, in fact. “I want to build a new moment, a new era, a new way with Aston Villa. I can remind myself of the moment I had here.”

Norwich Theatre Royal
There are eye-popping designs, playful puns and musical flourishes as Joe Tracini’s story unfolds on its own madcap shoreline

Here is a sun-kissed panto to dispel any dreams of a white Christmas. Joe Tracini’s script is set in the seaside town of Crabbington Sands where a pastel-dressed ensemble make merry with Aimee Leigh’s breezy choreography. Cinderella’s sisters, gruesome twosome Lou and Lav (cue toilet-flush effect), could have stepped out of an outrageously saucy postcard. Designer Kirsteen Wythe gifts them lurid costumes best seen with UV protection. They include a beach ball-shaped dress, a bucket-and-spade hat, fairground-ride frocks and wigs seemingly woven with fishing rope.

Cinderella’s parents ran a local hotel that has been shuttered since she lost them, and she yearns for new adventures, a longing captured in an opening rendition of Natasha Bedingfield’s Unwritten. In the lead role, Georgia May Foote brings a big sister vibe to her crowdwork with the young audience that also underlines how Cinders sees the hopelessly devoted Buttons (Tracini) as a brother. But she is written to be a bit insipid, and there is little spark to her romance with a wannabe rock-star prince (Danny Hatchard, poised between buffoon and decent bloke).

Dutch rising star has gone from not knowing ‘how to grip the dart’ to a dark horse for the PDC world championship

It’s the deciding leg of the European Championship final. Gian van Veen, the 23-year-old from the Netherlands chasing his first major title, has just missed two match darts to win 11-9. Luke Humphries, world No 1 at the time, starts the final leg with a 140.

“Oh, you’ve blown it here,” Van Veen replies when asked to describe his internal monologue during that moment in October. “Luke Humphries is not going to crumble under this pressure. Maybe it was a negative thought. But it also released some pressure for me, in a way.”

The name originated during the period of Boris Johnson boosterism. People no longer want Brexit triumphalism, but things that actually work

What’s in a name? A government minister has a good answer for Shakespeare’s question. “Names aren’t just convenient labels for people, places and things. They come with expectations,” the minister said. “Countries don’t normally have these pressures. But Great Britain? It’s quite a name to live up to.”

The words are from the opening of Great Britain? How We Get Our Future Back, published last year by the Labour MP Torsten Bell, now a Treasury minister. Bell’s book is about why this country is, and feels, broken. But it is also spot on about this country’s enduring naming problem. As Bell puts it: “What began as a statement about our geography has become one about our quality.”

Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist