A mysterious crank with advanced skills in miniature bombmaking whose devices have several times come close to killing people

A mysterious crank with advanced skills in miniature bombmaking, whose devices have several times come close to killing people, has struck again. In Italy they call him “Unabomber”, and his stamping ground is the north-east. But he is proving no less elusive than that Harvard-educated loner.After a 10-year police hunt in the cities of Venice, Treviso, Udine and Pordenone, detectives are no closer to identifying the maniac. They assume it is a man but they cannot even be sure of that And he continues to menace the region. Yesterday he was back, after an absence of nearly two years.Between 9am and 9.30am, a group of schoolchildren in the town of Treviso were walking between their school and the town’s theatre where they were to enjoy a play. The circular box has a silver band and an engraved silver disc in the centre inscribed: “This box is part of the mast of L’Orient, blown up at the Nile, from which Nelson’s coffin was made.

Died 21st October, 1805.” It is expected to fetch £4,000.The documents include a letter from Nelson, an autographed note and his official appointment as a Vice-Admiral of the Blue dated 10 months before his death at Trafalgar The auction is at Lyon & Turnbull in Edinburgh.. Without this funding, we would be looking at the closure of the ship in 2007 and perhaps demolition.”Cutty Sark supporters were not the only people celebrating yesterday. In Scotland, a £17.7m grant from the HLF will help secure an incomparable publishing archive for the National Library of Scotland.The archive is the history of the John Murray publishing house which was established in Edinburgh in 1768. It comprises 150,000 manuscripts, papers and correspondence between the publisher and influential figures such as Charles Darwin, David Livingstone, Jane Austen, Sir Walter Scott, Thomas Carlyle, Benjamin Disraeli and William Ewart Gladstone.

It also includes the most extensive collection of Byron’s work in the world.Colin McLean, of the HLF in Scotland, said the archive was “a treasure trove that illustrates a period of extraordinary intellectual and literary endeavour. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity and we are delighted to help ensure it can now stay in the UK”. Although £6.5m needs to be raised, the purchase would now be possible.Other recipients this week were four cash-strapped museums. Nearly £16m has been pledged towards plans for a new museum of transport in Glasgow, the Riverside Museum. The Tank Museum in Bovington, Dorset, has been awarded nearly £8.9m. The Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter, which is more than 100 years old, is to receive £8.5m for a major overhaul. And nearly £9.2m has been pledged to create the Great North Museum in Newcastle..

A batch of long-lost letters which give a unique insight into the career and life of Lord Nelson are expected to fetch more than £10,000 when they go up for auction next week. “She is an iconic symbol and evokes a powerful sense of British history, contributing to modern-day London.”Richard Doughty, the trust’s chief executive, said: “The Heritage Lottery Fund has, in effect, saved the ship. It is a major picture by a painter right at the peak of his career. All the major pictures are in museums; to find a completely fully-finished oil by Burne-Jones just does not happen.”.

The Cutty Sark was saved from closure and destruction yesterday after a plan to rescue the ship was awarded a £13m grant. The trust needs to raise another £12m itself.Carole Souter, director of the HLF, said the project was a wonderful use of lottery money. It will allow visitors to see the repairs being carried out.When the Cutty Sark Trust first applied for lottery money five years ago it was turned down, but the revised plans have extracted £1.2m development funding and a pledge of a further £11.7m. The planned restoration work will take place inside a transparent inflatable envelope designed by the Eden Project architect Sir Nicholas Grimshaw. But before it does, it will be briefly reunited with its sister work, A Wood-Nymph, from which it was parted in 1908.Experts had lost track ofA Sea-Nymph, after it was sold at Christie’s in 1908 by William Connal, a wealthy Glaswegian iron-broker and ship-owner who had hung it in his London home in Berkeley Square with several of the artist’s other works.According to the family, the picture was bought by an art dealer named Sulley.