THE former London gangland figure Ronnie Kray was buried without his brain, his older brother told Woolwich Crown Court yesterday. It was secretly removed by Home Office pathologists to "experiment" on, Charlie Kray (70) told a jury.
He recalled how it was several months before his family discovered the truth. The brain was finally returned in a casket and a second ceremony was held to bury it, Kray said.
Kray denies a charge of offering to supply £39 million worth of cocaine.
The last residence of Benito Mussolini, a villa near Lake Garda, is to be turned into a luxury hotel, the town's mayor said yesterday. The 19th century Villa Feltrinelli di Gargano del Garda, where Mussolini lived when he headed a Nazi puppet regime in northern Italy at the end of the second World War, will become a 25 room hotel, mayor Daniele Roscia said yesterday.
Actress Kathryn Hunter (40) is about to make theatre history by playing King Lear. Hunter, 40, is believed to be the first British woman to take the role of Shakespeare's doomed king of England.
She denies she is mounting a feminist crusade by taking on the role when it opens at London's Young Vic on June 25th.
She said: "All acting is about making an imaginative leap. You don't have to be a murderer to play a murderer but the audience always makes that leap with you.
The Spice Girls have stopped Paul McCartney reaching number one in the US. Britain's girl group are still at number one in the US Billboard album chart for the fourth week running - just ahead of McCartney's latest album Flaming Pie in second spot.