The Friday Digest 28/03/14

This week's update features Victorian street view, the boat that rocked and a guide to pyjama dressing. 

 * Nearly 90 years after J R R Tolkien first translated Beowulf,  the Lord of the Rings author’s version is going to be published. 

* A museum in Milan is furious after a student tried to takes a selfie and broke the nineteenth-century Greek-Roman statue that he was sitting on.

* Lorem ipsum has been translated by a Cambridge academic but it remains all Greek to me ...

* Tova Mirvis asks if these are the 9 most dysfunctional marriages in literature?  

* Hundreds of people gathered in Zagan, Poland this week to remember the allied prisoners of war who died in The Great Escape of the Second World War.

* The pirate that ruled the airwaves: Radio Caroline was the boat that rocked the music business.

* How many tradespeople did it take to dress an eighteenth-century lady?

* Did women in Greece and Rome speak? Mary Beard answers that 'stupid question' here.

* The Museum Of London seeks help with Victorian street view.  

* The 1893-96 Ordnance Survey map of London —recently released by the National Library of Scotland – has now been superimposed over a modern Google map.

*Beauty and the Beach: A guide to pyjama dressing. 

* The official ranking of Jane Austen's 14 leading men, from Darcy to Mr. Collins.

* Jane Austen and the art of letter writing.

* Polio may seem like an ancient disease but for many it is still within living memory. The 'iron lung' was the solution devised by Philip Drinker and Louis Agassiz Shawin 1927, and which John Emerson improved in 1931.

* Five bookish iPhone games you should be playing right now.

* After it was announced that prisons would be banning books being sent to prisoners, there was outrage with many claiming that the idea is not just nasty but bizarre too. But what do you think about the ban? 

* 15 breathtaking illustrations of fairy tales from the 1920s.

* Was Elvis Presley destined to die early? The Channel 4 programme Dead Famous DNA analysed samples of hair said to have belonged to the singing legend and found genes linked to several medical conditions.

 * The Spanish Civil War 75 Years On: What are we commemorating?

* As Tony Benn was buried on Thursday, Clare Griffiths shares her memories of this 'man of history'.

Which history and publishing stories have you enjoyed reading this week?