Shops across London closed their doors early today amid fears of further rioting.

The end of an era – this was the reaction on hearing of the unexpected death of Honor Frost: the end of the heroic age of pioneering aqualung diving and its impact on archaeology.

Tens of millions of pounds held in the reserve accounts of Britain's major museums – much of it donated by private donations and bequests – is frozen by the Treasury, despite the arts being in the midst of the biggest funding crisis in a generation.

This eerie image of an ancient bristlecone pine set against the backdrop of the Milky Way while a meteor streaked across the night sky has won the National Maritime Museum's annual astronomy photographic competition.

It was a characteristically modest and exact description; Richard Walker knew better than anyone the art of cataloguing, describing what he saw economically and precisely, yet evoking the picture as vividly as if you could see it.

In the War Office there were a lot of old fossils. But the one who was the real fossil was Claud William Wright. He was not only a senior administrative civil servant, and when transferred to the Ministry of Education the first Permanent Secretary, in effect, to Lord Eccles' Ministry of the Arts under Margaret Thatcher, but also from an early age, a leading geologist, palaeontologist and archaeologist.

Today: Throw light on the towers that protect ships from hazardous coastlines: the National Maritime Museum Cornwall in Falmouth opens an exhibition entitled "Lighthouses: Life on the Rocks". Running for two years, it will display a four-ton optic, reconstructed living quarters, artefacts, photos and narratives (nmmc.co.uk).