Conservationists are launching a scheme to bring back water voles to parts of the UK.

An exhibition of jewellery from Mughal India goes on show at London's British Museum.

London's Victoria and Albert museum is to undergo its biggest redevelopment in 50 years, with a GBP150m revamp.

London's new  Tate Modern helps boost visitor numbers to England's museums and galleries.

London's Royal Festival Hall celebrates 50 years since its inaugural concert on Thursday with a royal gala attended by HRH The Prince of Wales.

The concert opens with the premiere of a fanfare by Sir Harrison Birtwhistle, commissioned as a birthday gift to the Hall by the Philharmonia Orchestra.

Valery Gergiev then conducts the resident Philharmonia Orchestra with soloists including soprano Angela Gheorgiou, baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky and pianist Murray Perahia.

And a weekend of music follows which celebrates the diversity of modern music as well as Britain's classical tradition.

By contrast the opening concert on 3 May, 1951, was an all-British affair, including works by Elgar, Purcell, Arne and Vaughan Williams.

The orchestra was conducted by Sir Adrian Boult and Sir Malcolm Sargent.

Monument

The Royal Festival Hall was the first major building completed in Britain after World War II.

It is the only lasting monument to the 1951 Festival of Britain and was the first post-war British building to be listed for preservation.

The construction was completed in 20 months - despite great shortages of building materials - and cost £2m.

Under the foundation stone, laid in 1949 by then Prime Minister Clement Attlee, are buried contemporary coins, a copy of the day's Times, and the full score of Benjamin Britten's music for the wedding of Lord and Lady Harewood.

The 2001 celebrations continue on Friday when Elvis Costello, Nick Cave and David Thomas play live in Total Meltdown, a celebration of the hall's Meltdown series, one of Britain's foremost contemporary music events.

Composer Peter Maxwell Davies will conduct the premiere of his new Antarctica Symphony on Sunday.

He has said that the symphony, his eighth, will be his last.

It was commissioned by the Philharmonia Orchestra as a sequel to Ralph Vaughan Williams' Sinfonia Antarctica.

Last symphony

Maxwell Davies actually travelled to Antarctica as a guest of the British Antarctic Survey to research the work.

The link with Ralph Vaughan Williams also represents a link to the Festival Hall's first concert, which also featured the composer's work.

The building's birthday celebrations also include huge photographs of the building then and now, a list of the 10,000 performers who have played at the hall, and an exhibition of the experience of attending an arts event.

This year will also see a major fund-raising campaign and work on the entrances, public spaces and acoustics of the hall.

Oscar-winning film producer David Puttnam is backing an English Heritage campaign to save some of Britain's most historic cinemas.

London's  Millennium Bridge reopens on Friday after GBP5m modifications to stop it swaying underfoot.