The recent discovery of a flamboyant set of stained-glass panels could bring posthumous recognition to the Irish artist Harry Clarke. Fiona Sturges reports from the saleroom

Kate Saunders has a vision of perfection: Impossible Saints by Michele Roberts, Little, Brown, pounds 14.99

A Florida jury awarded $1.25m (pounds 780,000) to the family of an amputee who was buried without the legs she had entrusted to a funeral home for safekeeping years before her death.

There can be few, if any, persons past or present who could list LVO, DMus, FSA, FRAM, FRCM, FRCO after their name, and it may be that in this, at least, William Cole was unique. One of the most distinguished musicians of his generation, he had an extremely successful and full life. The staggering breadth of his involvement in so many spheres leaves one wondering how he managed to fit it all into one lifetime.

The natural mother of Billie-Jo Jenkins (right) missed her daughter's funeral yesterday, after storming out of the chapel in tears when the murdered teenager's foster mother arrived uninvited. Debbie Woods had specifically asked that the foster mother, Lois Jenkins, should stay away from the packed service in east London for the popular 13-year-old.

An arsonist with a grudge is thought to be responsible for fires which severely damaged four isolated churches in Devon within an hour of each other on Saturday night and early yesterday morning.

Turin's Cardinal Giovanni Saldarini proclaimed the rescue of the Turin Shroud from a fire yesterday as a miracle - but its survival owed at least as much to the courage and presence of mind of an Italian fireman.

Sue Wheat goes on location for the real story behind her film debut in `Fever Pitch'

Sometimes you can have too much light. For almost 60 years the big west window of the chapel of Magdalen College, Oxford, has been glazed with plain transparent leaded lights, and the lofty vaulted ceiling, the rood screen and the ancient reredos at the east end have been drenched in the cold light of the modern day. The stained glass in the other windows consequently suffered "face light" - light from the front - that obscured them, and the mood of the whole chapel was flattened.

A skeleton found under a castle floor may shed further light on an unsolved mystery over an ancient royal household, experts believe. The skeleton, at least 450 years old, was found on Thursday during survey work at Stirling Castle in central Scotland.

For many Scottish musicians, the rediscovery of the 16th-century composer Robert Carver was at least as significant as the return of the Stone of Scone. But let's not make too much of the national issue. Carver is important for anyone who cares about church music in the so-called Age of Faith.

Irish gave up

For most of us churches are just for Christmas - so why do we say we want more of them? Jonathan Glancey has a much better idea

Sir: Adam's 6,000th birthday falls tomorrow. John Lightfoot, who was vice-chancellor of the University of Cambridge, built on the genealogical scholarship of Archbishop James Ussher (Sacred Chronology, 1620) and concluded that Adam was created at 9am on Sunday 23 October, 4004 BC. Perhaps The Independent would like to mark this anniversary with a front-page reproduction of God zapping Adam on the Sistine Chapel ceiling.