Exhibition opening of the week: Turner, Wedgwood & Beyond: Inspired by Flaxman, York Art Gallery, on show until running until January 17 2027

J.M.W. Turner’s masterpiece Ulysses deriding Polyphemus – Homer’s Odyssey, generously lent by the National Gallery, is making an epic journey north to go on display at York Art Gallery in the wake of the Odyssey’s comeback into popular culture in Christopher Nolan’s film.

Turner, Wedgwood Beyond: Inspired by Flaxman features an ‘Odyssey wall’ in an exhibition that reflects on the life and legacy of York-born sculptor, illustrator and designer John Flaxman (1755 –1826). Opening hours: Wednesday to Sunday, 10am to 5pm. Tickets: yorkartgallery.org.uk.

Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus – Homer’s Odyssey, by J.M.W. Turner, 1829, on loan from National Gallery, London, for Turner, Wedgwood & Beyond: Inspired by Flaxman at York Art Gallery. Copyright: National Gallery, London

Trail of the week: Ghosts In The Gardens, York, September 19 to November 1

GHOSTS In The Gardens is back for its sixth haunting season and this time the ghosts are bringing even more friends as 70 ghostly sculptures appear in gardens, on balconies, along the city walls and in unexpected corners of York city centre.

Ten new ghosts join familiar faces from York’s past, each sculpture offering a snapshot of history, bringing fascinating York people, creatures or stories back to life. Some ghosts will return to old haunts, others will be found somewhere new. Admission is free.

One of 70 ghosts in the Ghosts In The Gardens trail through York this autumn. Picture: Amy D’Agorne

Humble agenda of the week: John Bramwell, Selby Town Hall, September 19, 7.30pm

AS the singer in I Am Kloot from 1999 to 2014, John Bramwell achieved a Mercury Prize nomination for 2010’s The Sky At Night, a top ten chart position for 2013’s Let It All In, numerous UK and European tours and a triumphant orchestral farewell at the Queen Elizabeth Hall.

Now, as a solo artist, Bramwell travels a very different path, a path that criss-crosses the length and breadth of the UK with a humble agenda of taking his heartwarming songs to the stage for his devoted fans. Box office: 01757 708449 or selbytownhall.co.uk.

Brass clashes of the week: National Brass Band Championships of Great Britain 2026, York Barbican, September 19 and 20 from 9am and 3pm each day

THE National Brass Band Championships bring more than 70 of the country’s finest brass bands to York for the Sections 1 to 4 national finals. Among the Yorkshire bands competing will be York Railway Institute Band, Wetherby Silver Band and Swinton & District Excelsior Band, all having qualified to compete for National honours. Tickets: Only available to buy in-person on the day. No advance tickets.

Magical show of the week: Piff & Pop’s Magic Shoppe, Grand Opera House, York, September 19, 7.30pm

Piff the Magic Dragon and Penn Jillette in Piff & Pop’s Magic Shoppe at Grand Opera House, York

LEGENDARY magicianPenn Jillette, of Penn & Teller fame, is touring the UK for the first time without his 50-year companion Teller, teaming up instead with London-born, Las Vegas-based comedy-magician phenomenon Piff the Magic Dragon (alias John van der Put), fromAmerica’s Got Talent.

Act One feature a solo act from both Pop (Penn) andPiff along withMr Piffles, the world’s only magic-performing Chihuahua.. In Act Two, they blend into a one-of-a-kind double act. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.

Touring theatre show of the week: Mikron Theatre in Top Of The World, Clements Hall, York, September 20, 2pm

MARSDEN’S travelling troupe Mikron Theatre makes its second visit of 2026 to York, this time with Maeve Larkin’s celebration of the importance of mobile libraries as sanctuaries, beacons of hope, public services that connect people and communities in a digital age where human connection is more important than ever.

Top Of The Wold invites audiences to hop aboard the charmingly quirky mobile library for a heart-warming journey via Bempton, Bridlington, Hornsea and Howden in an exploration of a region barely noticed by the nation it feeds, celebrating the forgotten, the resilient and the wonderfully eccentric. Tickets: available from Pextons, Bishopthorpe Road, York; Clements Hall, 01904 466086; by email to willyh@phonecoop.coop or 07974 867301.

Unpredictable comedy gig of the week: Tim Key, Loganberry, York Theatre Royal, September 20, 8pm

TIM Key, from The Ballad Of Wallis Island and Tim Key’s Late Night Poetry Programme, pops his suit on again to plod about in new show Loganberry. In Key’s own words, “Bit gutted he’s old. Guzzling continental lager. Magnetic LOL. Decent reviews for previous shows. Played a pigeon in Bong Joon Ho’s latest movie. Been on Richard Herring’s podcast. Book out: “L.A. Baby!”. Met Steffi Graf in 1998/9. This show has poems in, and he’ll stamp and howl.” Who knows what else may lie in wait on Sunday! Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Seventies’ chart topper of the week: Gilbert O’Sullivan, Celebrating 60 Years Of Music, Grand Opera House, York, September 22, 7.30pm

Gilbert O’Sullivan: Songs old and new at the Grand Opera House, York

GILBERT O’Sullivan will celebrate 60 years of making music, revisiting his UK chart toppers, 1972’s Clair and 1973’s Get Down, as well as such O’Sullivan favourites as No Matter How I Try, We Will, Matrimony, Ooh-Wakka-Doo-Wakka-Day, Why, Oh Why, Oh Why and What’s In A Kiss?, his last of 16 Top 40 entries from August 1980. Then add further selections from his 21 studio albums, the latest, On The Record, being previewed ahead of its November 6 release. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.

Political disquiet of the week: Nish Kumar, Angry Humour From A Really Nice Guy, Grand Opera House, York, September 23, Leeds Playhouse, October 3, Hull Truck Theatre, October 9 and Scarborough Spa Theatre, November 14

Nish Kumar’s tour poster for Angry Humour From A Really Nice Guy

“THE world is in chaos,” laments political comedian Nish Kumar. “Inequality is widening, autocracy is rising and political parties are collapsing. In these divided times, what this country desperately needs is Angry Humour From a Really Nice Guy. (In many ways it’s actually the last thing this country needs, but it’s what it’s getting, so tough luck).”

Pod Save The UK podcast co-host and former host of axed BBC Two show The Mash Report and Late Night Mash, Kumar has entered his 40s. His mind is breaking, his body is worse, “but audiences can still expect existential angst and political disquiet from comedy’s cheekiest boy”. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.

But West Ham fought back after the break, earning a late share of the spoils thanks to quick-fire goals from Konstantinos Mavropanos and Mohamadou Kante, who was later sent off for a last-man foul on Kyrell Lisbie. Follow Millwall vs West Ham reaction live below, including analysis from Standard Sport’s Arthur Ferridge at The Den.

Marlon James’s 2026 novel, The Disappearers, has already been hailed as the novel of the century by The New York Times, and it is certainly magnificent and explosive in equal measure. Its success lies in the way its artistic execution dovetails with its highly charged subject matter.

The Disappearers pulls the reader into a seemingly knowable time and place – the Jamaica of 1988 to 2005. Yet what James seeks to make known and felt is not to be found in any record or archive. Focusing on the experiences of men who love, desire, and have sex with men in a virulently homophobic Jamaican society, this is a novel that explores a silenced history with astonishing depth and detail.

In my own work, I have published literary criticism that argues for the Caribbean as a constitutively queer, as well as a homophobic, space and I found The Disappearers to be a powerful literary reckoning with this hidden past. It strives to bear witness to the harm done to young and old men, with the damage inflicted on masculinity, with the volatile entanglements of vulnerability and exploitation, and with the ferocity and survival of queer intimacy. All of this in a city and a time where dancehall lyrics, Aids, and evangelical sermons created a crucible of loathing that legitimised violent denial.

The action, initially narrated through the diary entries of Eddy Porteous, begins as eight men gather to rehearse John Herbert’s provocative and unsettling 1967 US prison play Fortune and Men’s Eyes about homosexuality and sexual power play. As Havelock Titus, the director, declares: “The love that dares not speak its name, shouts all sorts o’ ways in prison. Even in a Jamaican prison.”

To perform homosexuality is undoubtedly an endeavour fraught with risk. However, the rehearsal room is a rare and briefly held space to live it and “to be part of something that tells Jamaica to go fuck herself”.

When a homophobic mob storms a rehearsal intent on killing those gathered there, the assault is narrated episodically in the voices of the perpetrators. The prose thrums with the righteous hatred and exhilaration of abhorrence that accompanies their acts of violence. By the end of the evening, one man is murdered, one blinded, and all carry injuries that can never be healed. Shortly afterwards, two of the men, Matt Chin and Orrin Turner, disappear.

The narrative resumes six years later, and the search for the disappeared follows multiple pathways through many eyes, as the novel makes it clear that gay men in Jamaica disappear way before anyone notices they’ve gone. The farce of queer denial is captured by one of the eight’s imagined intervention:

a Day Without the Gay, one morning where none of us show up for work … Can you imagine? Battyman and lesbian cleaning their house, cooking their food, teaching their kids, curing their sickness, and literally saving their lives every fucking day. You think they would see us then? … The only way for them to see us is for us to disappear.

But who wants to be seen when it means being outcast by family, vanished by closeted lovers and clients? And besides, survival often depends on invisibility and passing “given that a battyman has a sign on his back that says ‘Kill us any which way then move on’”.

This is not new territory for James. His eye for the snarled and performative character of Jamaican hypermasculinity and the co-existence of its homophobic and queer incarnations showed itself in his third novel A Brief History of Seven Killings. Here we see it through Weeper, the gang enforcer of West Kingston, who still writes letters to the man he loved in prison.

Yet what is a fleeting, if compelling, chronicle in Brief History becomes the substance of The Disappearers. This book unfolds the varied and intimate realities of gay men, their backstories, and afterlives. In their differences in class, ethnicity, social privilege, sexual preference, desire for attachment, emotional intelligence, eloquence, and identity constructions, the novel writes away the enforced flatness of slurs and stereotypes to humanise at scale. It is an everyday act of narrative restitution that has revolutionary significance given the continuing sexual politics of Jamaica.

Nevertheless, and equally significant, there is no comfortable place for the reader in this novel. It does not flinch in expressing the externally tormented, internally combusted lives of its protagonists. The restitution it offers is defiantly not the work of explanation or redemption. And it sets itself at maximum distance from the respectability prized by Jamaican middle-class heterosexuality — possibly epitomised by Jordan forcing his homophobic father, incapacitated by a stroke, to witness him having sex.

In terms of its aesthetics, James’s writerly watermarks are all on show. There are intensely held scenes, polyphony, intertextuality and a soundtrack – he is writing on the edge of extravaganza. But let’s be clear. This is not only a virtuoso literary performance – it is an enraged and personal act of restitution.

When Jordan Brown, a protagonist, praises the efforts of a journalist to record the brutal mob attack, he articulates the necessity of this novel – “Jamaica don’t get to beat us, kill us, then vanish us. And we don’t get to stop paying attention. This is important.” As James has been keen to acknowledge, this news story is one he could have featured in had he not fled to the church that closeted him, and then to the US, which gave him the distance from which to write with the excruciating proximity that defines his art here.

The Disappearers is a resolute, defiant and harrowing refusal to look away. It is more arrestingly a literary gesture of solidarity and kinship. In Jordan Brown’s words, “a touch that says ‘There you are, I know you, I see you.’” This is both an essential recognition and one that primes the imagination for justice and transformation to come.

This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org. If you click on one of the links and go on to buy something, The Conversation UK may earn a commission.

The safety precautions were prompted by the discovery of what are believed to be old munitions in a garage in Holgate.

Police are ordering people out of their homes around Windmill Rise and they are warning they may have to close part of Acomb Road, which runs parallel to Windmill Rise.

Army experts have been called out to check the munitions.

A police spokesman said: “Your safety is our priority, so thank you for your support and understanding while we do this.

“Please avoid the area for the time being and speak to our officers at the scene if you have any concerns.”

We will keep you updated.