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Entertainment

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Entertainment

Hometown glory? Norwegian library unveils £100k history book donated by Erling Haaland

Rare 16th-century edition of Viking royal sagas given to Bryne by Manchester City footballer and his father At his local library in the southern Norwegian town of Bryne, the father of superstar striker Erling Haaland made a confession. “Sometimes my son and I are a little impulsive,” Alf Inge Haaland, known as Alfie, told the assembled crowd on Monday morning. The spontaneous act in question was the purchase of the only surviving privately owned edition of a 1594 book, Snorre Sturlasons Kongesagaer (Snorre Sturlason’s Royal Sagas). The auction purchase for 1.3m Norwegian kroner (£103,000) was

The Guardian
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Entertainment

A one-part wonder! The West End’s streamlined Harry Potter and the Cursed Child works like magic

Palace theatre, London Five hours have been trimmed to three for this new version but it is packed with magic moments and superb performances Ten years on from its premiere, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child has been transformed from an epic two-part play into a richly absorbing one-part production. A similar version is already running to great acclaim on Broadway but it still feels risky to tinker with a show that has come to feel like a fixed jewel in the West End. Happily, that risk has paid off and Cursed Child hasn’t lost any of its sparkle. Admittedly, there are some drawbacks to reducin

The Guardian
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Entertainment

‘A three-minute history of England written in the tour bus toilet’: how Tenpole Tudor made Swords of a Thousand Men

‘Dressed as knights, we’d walk onstage to the sound of the William Tell overture. I’d quote Henry V and the crowd would shout, “You’re the rightful king of England!”’ I’d worked up the basic idea on Stiff Records’ three-month tour of the northern hemisphere. It’s near-impossible to write songs on the road because you lack the basic solitude, so I’d retire to the tour coach latrine. The melody was really a boogie-blues progression, part-inspired by Norman Greenbaum’s Spirit in the Sky and Canned Heat’s On the Road Again. But lyrics only flowed when we came off the tour. Rehearsing near our favo

The Guardian
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Entertainment

‘We did 10 takes of it!’ Kerr Smith on Dawson’s Creek and filming US TV’s first gay kiss

As he releases a memoir, the actor opens up about the late James Van Der Beek, the magic of the Creek, and facing homophobia for playing gay in the 90s There are worse things to spend a couple of decades chasing than the feeling of being young, successful and surrounded by people who love you. For Kerr Smith, though, the particular magic of Dawson’s Creek has proved just about impossible to replicate. “I’ve spent the last 25 years of my career trying to re-create that experience,” Smith says of the WB teen drama, on which he played the sensitive jock Jack McPhee for five seasons. “I’ve been tr

The Guardian
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