Free Republic

"We couldn't let such a nice prison burn down," Ronny Stenberg said after he and fellow inmates at Arendal Prison in Fyresdal chose to fight flames rather than run. "I don't dare think what would have happened if the prisoners themselves hadn't discovered the fire and helped fight it," prison guard Daniel Trollsås told newspaper Agderposten. When firefighters arrived after about 40 minutes, a prisoner sleeping near the blaze had been pulled out to safety and the fire halted, with damage limited to only one barracks. In appreciation of the effort, the prison threw a party last Wednesday after the...

Tapestry reveals Tudor country idyll By Nigel Reynolds, Arts Correspondent Last Updated: 2:02am BST 05/06/2007 One of the greatest tapestries made in Elizabethan England has been rediscovered in America after it disappeared almost a century ago following a blunder by a prominent British art historian. The tapestry represents an idyll of sixteenth century country life The giant hanging, measuring 15 ft by 6ft and made in the 1580s, with an idealised image of country life shows that wealthy Tudors had much the same aspirations to own a beautiful part of the countryside as their counterparts today. A fantasy palace -...

Battleground in Manhattan as blue bloods fear losing their urban idyll By David Usborne in New York 01 January 2004 The posh residents of Sutton Place in Manhattan love to chatter about the wonder of their neighbourhood, which overlooks the East River and is replete with grand apartment buildings erected in the Twenties and Thirties. It is, they whisper, as splendid as Eaton Square, yet as intimate as London mews. No address along these seven blocks of privilege, located just north of the United Nations, is more sought after than One Sutton Place South, a 13-storey Italian Renaissance monument to...