The Friday Digest 05/06/15

This week's update features the drivers of the 1980s, secrets to a lasting romance and the illicit trade in antiquities. 

* A lesson of Waterloo. 

* Napoleon in pieces: the emperor's life in Lego. 

* Rampley and Co. have created a pocket square featuring the Duke of Wellington to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Battle Of Waterloo. 

 
* An interactive map of the evacuation of Dunkirk. 

* The real 'Beast of Belsen'? Irma Grese and female concentration camp guards. 

* The anti-Nazi gangster: 'Bugsy' Siegel and the plot to assassinate Göring.

* The occupation children who were shunned in post-war Germany and Austria.

 
* Did Roman Britain have its own emperor?  

* Trafficking culture: the move by archaeologists and criminologists to combat the illicit trade in antiquities.  

* Couples who have been together for over fifty years share the secrets of a lasting romance. 

* Fifteen tips for writing an amazing love letter ... 

* The 1915 FA Cup: remembering the First World War's 'khaki cup final'. 

* What if the Allies had lost the First World War?  

* How music halls like the Coliseum and theatres like the Empire were the centre of city life. 

* A 'new species' of ancient human has been found in the Afar region of Ethiopia. 

* Twenty of the world's most iconic landmarks before they were finished. 

* This is what the first photographs of snowflakes looked like ... 

* The rise, fall and decay of Disney’s River Country. 

* Drivers in the 1980s: a look back at London car culture. 

* Cuneiform: six things you (probably) didn’t know about the world’s oldest writing system. 

* A 140-year-old bottle of beer brewed for an arctic expedition is to be auctioned after being found in a garage in Shropshire. 

* Was Mary Celeste the unluckiest ship to ever sail the seven seas? 

* The Rolling Stones share an unheard version of Brown Sugar featuring Eric Clapton which was recorded at a party for Keith Richards in 1970. 

* ‘Farewell, readers’: Alan Rusbridger on leaving the Guardian after two decades at the helm. 

* It’s been sixty years since the winning murderer Tom Ripley was created, but why does he still fascinate readers?  

* How crime fiction defies description. 

* On writing what I know ... 

* Six tips on how to fit writing into your life. 

* Malorie Blackman has urged the next children’s laureate to speak their mind, despite describing her 'surprise' at the 'vitriolic reaction' she had received to some of her own campaigns.

* Jane Austen's #truthbomb and seventeen other literary hashtags. 

* Mr. Lunch Takes A Plane Ride: the first children's book illustrated using a computer.

* Commercial creep: how mass market design is influencing literary fiction.

* Stunning illustrated covers from Vogue. 

* 'Book autopsies' from Brian Dettmer. 

* A study by the National Literacy Trust has shown that in the UK, girls read online, but boys prefer print.

* A look at the US ebook market in 2014. 

* Analysis of the last fifteen years of winners of six major literary awards by the critically acclaimed author Nicola Griffith has found that a novel is more likely to land a prize if the focus of the narrative is male.  

* Exclusive extracts from the books on the Baileys Prize shortlist. 

* Ali Smith won the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction 2015 with her book How To Be Both, the story of two parallel narratives involving a teenage girl in the 1960s and a Renaissance artist.  

* Kate Mosse on the joy of bookshops.