The Millennium Dome is to be sold to developers for nothing - in return for a share of profits from the site, reports suggest.

The captain of a dredger which hit the Thames Flood Barrier in London is criticised in a report into the accident.

Remains of a timber framed house which Shakespeare may have built, and lived in with other actors from his company, have been found within a stone's throw of the site of his  Globe theatre, and just round the corner from the modern replica where the 438th anniversary of his birth will be commemorated today.

The Globe theatre, and the actors' house, were built in 1599 in high drama worthy of the playwright. The company's lease on the theatre, on the north bank of the Thames, had expired. At dead of night, the managers and men of the company, probably including Shakespeare, dismantled the old building and ferried the timbers across to Southwark.

Their enraged former landlord, Giles Allen, bitterly described them as “ryotous … armed … with divers and manye unlawfull and offensive weapons … pulling breaking and throwing downe the sayd Theater in verye outragious violent and riotous sort to the great disturbance and terrefyeing … of divers others”.

The site of the original Globe was located 12 years ago, and the design of the new Globe was altered to reflect the evidence for the length and angles of the original walls.

The new discovery is on the corner of the plot acquired in 1599 for the theatre, and could provide the first solid evidence for the off-stage life of Shakespeare and his colleagues.

Only a fragment has been excavated, but it matches the location of the house known to have been built on land leased to the Globe shareholders in 1599 including Shakespeare.

“We're never going to know for sure, but these finds do look extremely interesting, and well worth further work,” Monica Kendall, an archaeologist and theatre worker, who has been researching the site, said yesterday.

The house built by the Chamberlain's Men was described as “adjoining” the Globe theatre, and like the Globe was burned down in 1613.

Finds suggest a very comfortable life, with fragments of wine glasses, some luxury imported pottery, and copious quantities of animal bones.

The timbers were found five years ago, in a limited excavation when archaeologists were permitted only a few trial trenches, before construction of flats and a car park.

· One of the highlights of the new season at the Globe Theatre will be a Twelfth Night as accurate as possible to the style of Shakespeare's day, with an all-male cast and handmade costumes.

In the Egyptian Hall of the Lord Mayor's palace in London a Woolman is chatting to a Tallow Chandler. Above their heads in a stained glass window, a man in rags is being run through with a sword. Two loud knocks echo around the chamber and in silence the Mayor enters to take his seat in front of a sword and mace, and rows of elderly men wearing gold chains and medallions.

“It's a strange movement,” says Lyn Williams from the Worshipful Company of Pewterers, “although it's not really a movement.”

Livery companies have been around for more than 900 years and were set up to regulate trade and craft in the City of London. “People don't know what to make of us,” says Williams. “Somebody gave me a mock bow the other day.”

A common suspicion is that liverymen are like the Freemasons. “A fly on the wall at one of the dinners might be surprised at the apparent irrelevance of the robes and chains, and the curious system of wardens and bailiffs to the modern world,” says Andrew Sich, head of corporate affairs at City and Guilds.

The Freemasons have always worked like cuttlefish to cloud themselves in obscurity. It has been a perfect surrogate for PR. Livery companies, however, despite their history and annual charity donations of nearly £40m, remain almost entirely unknown. “Somebody the other day mentioned that liveries were worn by jockeys,” says Andrew Gillett from the Founders Company.

There are 103 livery companies. Milk Street, Bread Street and Poultry are where it all began. The Innholders, Glovers, and Skinners speak for themselves. But perhaps less obvious are the Cordwainers (fine footwear), Fletchers (arrows) and Lorinors (equestrian gear).

Every July since the late 15th century the Vintners and Dyers companies have been going swan upping on the Thames. A flotilla of skiffs gathers at Eton boathouses in the third week of the month accompanied by the Queen's official swan marker. “They go boating down the river drinking champagne and counting swans,” says Lieutenant Colonel Tucker, clerk at the Pewterers. The police stepped in last year to end another annual pageant in which freemen from the companies drove sheep across  London Bridge. The sheep had been interfering with the traffic, said the police.

“The companies tend to work behind the scenes,” says Sich. This has not always been the case. The early companies or guilds played a prominent role in protecting British goods and traders against “foreign usurpers”. But by the early 17th century, a strong entrepreneurial spirit was emerging and companies began to reach out beyond the City limits. The rapid growth of British colonialism allowed them to invest money in merchant venture companies which owned exclusive trading rights with colonies throughout the empire. Probably the best known was the East India Company.

Livery companies have a history of changing with the times, says Tucker. At the end of the 19th century, the then prime minister, William Gladstone, warned that if Britain were to remain a world leader and preserve its triumvirate of throne, altar and empire, the companies needed to focus their resources on developing Britain's traditional skills base. A royal commission in 1880 commended their contributions to “education, social science and human progress” but also suggested reform to incorporate new industries and the growth of the professional middle classes.

Evolution has not always been lightening fast. “When women got on to court,” says Tucker, “we thought: 'Gosh, it's all very well having men-only clubs, but with lady liverymen you need loos and all the paraphernalia associated with having womenfolk around.'”

He has recently introduced the Pewterers' membership to email. “When I mentioned a local dial-up network, they thought I was talking about prostitutes.” For some time, female freemen were known as free sisters.

Each livery company has its own titles, language and coat of arms. It is impossible to generalise, says Williams. A three-horned rhinoceros tops the Apothecaries' shield and their banquet hall contains a unicorn horn donated by the pharmaceutical firm GlaxoSmithKline.

A master, prime warden or upper bailiff heads each company and liverymen first have to earn their spurs as freemen. That originally meant serving seven years as an apprentice. “You have to sit in freedom for longer in the older companies,” says Sich, “but now the journey is usually shorter and less painful.” Honorary freedom of the City has been granted to the likes of Florence Nightingale, Baroness Thatcher and Nelson Mandela.

Today, the companies keep their heads well below the parapets, says Gillett. “It's an old-fashioned thing. They're afraid that if they set themselves up, they'll be knocked down.” But a significant legacy remains. The expression “to be at sixes and sevens” derives from a dispute between the Merchant Taylors and the Skinners as to who would take sixth and seventh position in the annual proces sion from Guildhall to the Royal Courts of Justice. The 13 loaves of the baker's dozen also originated with the liveries; and up until the 1850s only freemen of the companies had the right to trade in the City.

Liverymen still elect the Lord Mayor who has jurisdiction within the City - everywhere else in Greater London is Ken Livingstone's turf - and they form the backbone of the snaking procession of floats in November's Lord Mayor's show.

Most companies have now relinquished their powers as regulatory bodies. Although the Fishmongers can still be found at Billingsgate Market nosing out inferior fillets, and the Goldsmiths continue to “hallmark” items of gold, silver and platinum.

“You don't need to justify yourself unless you're attacked,” says Gillett. With the dawn of the new millennium it's time for the companies to rethink their role, adds Tucker. In 1994 reform was thrust upon them. The Lord Mayor Sir Francis McWilliams thought the system had become too inward-looking and, like Gladstone a century before, urged the companies to funnel their resources into vocational training.

“The City cannot exist as an island of plenty in a sea of deprivation,” said McWilliams. As a result, the Livery October Group Vocational Education Committee was formed. The committee's objectives were to encourage the companies to adopt schools in deprived boroughs adjacent to the City, to promote apprenticeships in colleges and broaden young people's training for working life.

Education has always featured prominently on their list of concerns. St Paul's school was founded by the Mercers in 1509; Oundle and Wolverhampton Grammar schools as well as the London University colleges of Queen Mary and Goldsmiths' all owe their livelihoods to benefactors from the livery.

“I can't see that things are going to change radically,” says Sich.

Some might disagree. The Fan Makers, who once made ladies' fans, have now turned to mechanical fans and the Coachmakers now provide support for the aerospace industry. More recently, faces from the world of modern enterprise, stockbrokers and IT professionals, have been granted their charter. “We embrace all the traditional stuff. I still wear a gown with tassles stuffed with potpourri,” says Gillian Davies at the Information Technologists. The potpourri was an antidote to the smell of the streets.

“We need to recruit people who are active in the City today,” says Tucker. “People who know about the latest developments. It's difficult though. In the old days you relied on people having a sense of duty. Nowadays everyone's busier with their careers and families.” Williams says she would like to see more skirts around the place.

But the system will go on as it has done for centuries, says Dick Stringer from the Apothecaries: “They have survived and they will always survive. It's all part of being British. The saddlers stopped saddles coming in from abroad. That's originally what the companies were for.”

For the past four years the Pewterers have been forging a different role for themselves at St Judes school in Hackney, north London. Until recently special measures were in place at the school after it failed its Ofsted inspection. “Whenever anybody arrived in a suit the children assumed they were inspectors,” says Margery Wood, the head teacher.

Money for a book corner was donated and the help extended to include an inner-city farm in Sheffield. Last spring the master left his robes and chains to join the children with the chickens and pigs.

The day was dulcet. The sun shone. The birds sang. The daffs nodded gently in the breeze. All was harmony and light as the river flowed quietly at the edge of the greensward. The river? The Thames to be precise. I was settled in at the Waterside Inn at Bray for the first time in a decade, in the company of my eldest brother. Guardian readers may be more familiar with Bray as the home of the Fat Duck, the culinary playground of our own Heston Blumenthal, but for 30 years the Waterside Inn has been achieving the heights to which the Fat Duck aspires.

During that time the presiding spirit at the Waterside Inn has been Michel Roux, brother of Albert, who had been the presiding spirit at Le Gavroche, the restaurant that they founded together in London.

They are two of the most remarkable men ever to have practised the culinary arts in this, or any, country. They won stars. They did the TV-books-newspaper-column thing. They pioneered technical innovations and ran restaurant empires. They founded, and still run, the scholarship that bears their name, pour encourager les autres.

Chefs who have worked for them have headed out around the country carrying the flame of sound kitchen practice, not just in centres of fine dining but also in more generally accessible places - pubs, bistros, brasseries. And they've both had the strength of character to hand over control of their kitchens to their respective sons. Albert's son, Michel Jr, has been at the helm of Le Gavroche for a few years, but this year the shy and modest Alain, son of Michel Sr, officially becomes chef/patron at the Waterside.

Which brings me to what amounts to a national scandal. The Roux brothers have been honoured in France, the country of their birth, but in the country which has benefited immeasurably from their energy, enterprise and excellence, not a dicky bird. This is official dereliction on an infamous scale. If we can give the mayor of New York an honorary knighthood out of solidarity and respect, the very least we can do is confer the same honour on two men who have contributed so much to the standards of public eating in this country. That's all I have to say on the matter, except to add that a visit to the Waterside Inn is a reminder of just how high those standards are.

They don't just apply to the food, which you would expect, but equally to the service, which is all engaging charm and well-oiled professionalism; the décor, which places the emphasis on elegance, space and light; the pacing of a meal, which is leisurely and well ordered - there is always a sense of forward momentum, but never one of hurry; and the tone, which, while unquestionably shaped by money, is open, welcoming, democratic. Of course, the situation at the river's edge on a sublime spring day ladles on the sense of good cheer, but when you step into the Waterside Inn, you are picked up and held in this kindly, civilised embrace that not even the presentation of the bill can dispel.

It came to £207.50 in our case, which is a lot of money, but money very well spent. Unless you are very rich indeed, you are not going to be popping into the Waterside Inn on a regular basis. It will remain, for most of us, a place for high days, holidays, spring days, maybe once a year or even once a lifetime. On that basis, don't you deserve to spend £100 each on yourself and a friend? You can spend the same going to a Premiership football match, a trip to the opera, or an off-peak package holiday in Benidorm. It's a matter of priorities. I know where mine lie.

For that £207.50 we got six courses on the Menu Exceptionnel at £76 a head, plus three glasses each of wines, all French, from a formidable, all-French list, chosen specifically to go with each course, a glass of champagne and a glass of sherry beforehand, and a glass of vieille prune apiece to celebrate the close of play. The cooking is classic modern French. That is to say, each dish is carefully structured, the saucing is light but intense and clear, the balance between protein and carbohydrate impeccably observed, cooking times, for the most part, precise. This is not food that sets out to challenge, in the manner of modern French maestros such as Marc Veyrat or Pierre Gagnaire; it holds to traditional values of coherence, correlation and euphony.

The tronçonnette de homard poêlée minute au porto was outstanding, the density of the shellfish and the saucing lifted by ginger in the accompanying julienne of vegetables. There was the most refined crust of brioche crumbs on a taut filet of red mullet, with a sauce of fish stock and raspberry vinegar that brought the fish into sharp focus. The caneton challandais aux clous de girofle et au miel was roasted slightly past the requested roseate hue, but, carved at the table with expert minimalism into fine leaves of flesh, each mouthful was a melodious concord of duck, spice, honey and pure juices.

Cheeses, puddings, including a textbook soufflé chaud au Grand Marnier and a luxurious, sweet/tart jelly of rhubarb and Bonnezeaux, were jim-dandy. And… well, enough is enough. Of course, it would always be a real pleasure to lunch at the Waterside Inn, but on such a day it was a privilege.

· Open Wed-Sun, 12noon-2.30pm; 7-10pm. Menus: Menu Gastronomique, £36 for three courses; Menu Exceptionnel, £76 for five. All major credit cards. Wheelchair access (no WC).

The Tate Britain gallery is to get its own library with letters, photos and papers relating to British artists.

How about this for a dream location - I am based in an office next to Europe's second largest sewerage treatment works on the north bank of the River Thames. It may not be glamorous, but at least it offers us great access to the river.

I finished my MSc at King's College, London last year and now work for the Environment Agency as an assistant fish scientist specialising in estuaries. I am currently on a temporary contract researching and developing a classification scheme focusing on the fish component for the 150 or so estuaries across England and Wales -I'm hoping we will get the funding to carry on the project at the end of the first 12 months.

Officially considered dead in the 1950s and 60s, the Thames now has 121 species and there's even commercial fishing of sole which end up on restaurant tables. Part of our role here is to monitor the health of the river through the fish levels it supports. If there's heavy rain in the capital and the Victorian sewer system can't cope, Thames Water pumps the excess straight into the river. Oxygen levels drop after such a downpour as raw effluent is washed into the river as well - fish levels and their position give a good indication of the impact it has on the river, and how quickly it recovers.

My first degree at St Andrews was in marine biology and, as you might expect, I am a keen fly-fisherman. I was applying for similar jobs to the one I have now, but found they wanted experience and a postgraduate qualification. After a gap year in Australia I decided that if I were serious about going into this field I would have to return to college. The first term was spent in London in traditional lectures but the highlight of the course was the period at the marine research centre at Millport, on a small island off the west coast of Scotland. The final term was spent on placement with an employer.

I had met my current boss earlier and had asked him if he would take me as a placement. He agreed and I spent the summer helping a TV crew film the river, while researching and writing my dissertation. When the research contract came up he asked me whether I wanted to stay on. I would recommend the course because it was a major factor in getting the job I'd hoped for and it had very good input from the people and companies actually working in the field.

A 1,000-foot tower which will transform London's skyline and become Europe's tallest building gets planning approval.

BBC News Online gets the chance to play superspy at the  Science Museum's new James Bond exhibition.

Within two decades Henry Moore would be one of the highest earning British artists of the century, but in 1938 he was worrying about money.

A unique sheet of yellowing typescript, heavily annotated in pencil and ink, survives in the archive of the Tate Gallery, showing that he was earning £453 from art sales (in a good year, he has added in brackets, and £123 in a bad year).

Out of this he was having to pay up to a third in dealer's commissions, £53 in materials, £35 entertaining potential clients, £20 to models, £30 to have pieces of sculpture photographed, and £10 in “work given for charitable causes such as Spanish relief etc”.

It is among the treasures and oddities in the most important UK art library and archive, which go on display this week for the first time in a £2m suite of specially designed, climate controlled rooms on Millbank. The new Hyman Kreitman research centre is below the level of the Thames, but protected by submarine style flood doors from any repetition of the disastrous floods of 1928, which are also graphically illustrated by photographs in the archive.

Most of the collection is papers and books, but among the 1m objects are sketch books, paint boxes, JMW Turner's paint crusted palette, Vanessa Bell's family photograph album, and Walter Sickert's painting overalls, in a neat red linen bag embroidered by one of his three wives. The overalls were given by the artist's great niece who, to the consternation of the curators, asked a dry cleaners to remove the paint stains before she delivered them to the Tate.

Some of the objects have previously been on display in the galleries. A fragmentary piece of cream silk, preserved in a specially made long blue box, until 10 years ago tied up the hair of Degas's famous sculpture of a little ballerina - the ribbon on the statue has been replaced with a replica.

Artists not being renowned for good house keeping, some of the archives arrive in dire condition: one donation came straight from a painter's leaking studio and the documents are still being dried out between thousands of sheets of blotting paper.

Many are barely legible: archivists have spent days with knotted brows over Sickert's letters. Dora Carrington's round schoolgirl hand, in dozens of illustrated letters to John Nash, is an exception. The letters are a jaunty mixture of domesticity and arty gossip - in which it is impossible to see any shadow of her unhappy life, blighted by unreciprocated love, and eventual suicide.

And it proved to be a barrel of laughs as almost 50 people, including environment activists from the Thames 21 project, hauled debris out of the Thames on Sunday.

They also benefited from talks on the aquatic environment by volunteers and ecologists.
advertisement

Creekside Environmental Project spokesman Jill Goddard said: “It was organised by our 'greening and cleaning' project as part of the area-regeneration programme.

“We waited until the tide went out and each volunteer had about 50 barrels to carry across the creek.

“They had a harness on with strong rope and they tied a barrel to the rubbish with the rope and then walked back to the wall and secured the ropes there.

“As the tide came in, it covered the barrels. They floated up and the people were able to pull the shopping trolleys and rubbish over to the side.

“This is a much better way of doing it than with a digger which disturbs the fish — and it does much less damage.”

All the events so far have been for adults, but the Creekside Education Trust is organising equipment and staff so children can get involved next summer.