This says Ms Hughes is highly significant as the tablets pre-date Homer’s supposedly fictional work by

This, says Ms Hughes, is highly significant, as the tablets pre-date Homer’s supposedly fictional work by around 500 years.”Up until now, no one has written seriously about the characters in The Iliad: the people who make it live and breathe,” said Ms Hughes, who has been working on a biography of Helen for the past four years. A number of pieces are still emerging from the site.”It’s fabulously frustrating,” said Ms Hughes. “The tablets are slowly, slowly being deciphered, but it is like putting together a massive jigsaw.”Promisingly, the tablets already decoded mention a number of key names from Homer – including lost or vanished cities that supplied ships for the famous fleet led by Agamemnon and Achilles. “The tablets that have been rescued at Thebes mean we are having to re-draft the Bronze Age map. What is emerging is a picture of a world remarkably close to that described by Homer.”The fragmented tablets, inscribed in the ancient script known as Linear B, have been dated back to the 13th century BC – the period when the Trojan war is supposed to have been fought. Now, says Ms Hughes, a collection of shattered tablets discovered beneath the Greek city of Thebes could completely overturn that belief.”There is no doubt that this discovery is one of the keys that will unlock the story of Troy,” Ms Hughes said yesterday.

The legend has dominated Western culture for more than 3,000 years – the kidnapping of the most beautiful woman in the world, the thousand ships sent to bring her back, and the bloody 10-year war that followed. Guitarist Brian Jones introduced him to Lennon, who became fascinated by his gadgets.He was installed at Apple, which was famously a financial disaster for the band, and when a US businessman was brought in to sort out their affairs in 1969, Apple Electronics was closed and Mardas largely disappeared from the Beatles world.The Beatles biographer Peter Doggett, a consultant to the sale who travelled to Greece to meet Mardas, said: “I think he has been made a scapegoat for the troubled final years. He came up with ideas, but because of the chaotic situation at Apple there was no one able to market them He was certainly a very important figure in John’s life. He was his closest friend outside The Beatles in the years 1966-69, a period of incredible change in John’s life.”. Our estimate of £4,000 to £6,000 seems conservative and I wouldn’t be surprised if it went for something like £15,000.Mardas, who plans to give the money to a charity in Greece, came to Britain as a 21-year-old student. Heworked as a telephone repair man, but went on to exhibit his kinetic light sculptures at the Indica Gallery in London – one of which was bought by the Rolling Stones and used by the band on stage.

The other, known as “Happy Fish”, is a pen-and-ink drawing executed two years later as Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono holidayed with Mardas on the Greek island of Hydra.Christie’s head of popular entertainment, Sarah Hodgson, said: “‘Strong’ is in a very strong style and colouring that he didn’t do normally He is best known for his black ink line drawings Collectors are very interested. But discovering lads from this garrison doing similar things has come as a surprise and a big shock.”A local publican, who asked not to be named, said: “The Army has brought this on themselves and, to be perfectly honest, these pictures have not really surprised me. I know what some squaddies are like.”Pte Peter Hardy, 19, of the Devonshire and Dorset Regiment, also based at Catterick Garrison, said: “It is so very wrong, but at the same time I think a lot of people don’t quite understand what exactly is going on out there and the kind of pressure our troops are under.”But it seems the idiocy of one squaddie has brought shame on all of us, and it is certainly not going to help the peace-keeping effort.”. A vivid, multicoloured doodle created by John Lennon while tripping on LSD, and which he later gave to one of his closest friends, is part of an extraordinary collection of Beatles artefacts which could sell for up to £200,000 this week. Lennon once referred to him as his “guru” and acted as best man at his wedding in 1968.He is selling 15 of his Beatles items on Wednesday at Christie’s auction house. They include a custom-made Vox Kensington guitar formerly owned by both Lennon and George Harrison, estimated to fetch up to £120,000.The psychedelic sketch of bold interlocking figures and faces, called “Strong” and dating from 1967, is one of two Lennon artworks in the sale.

We are given lots of training on how to treat prisoners of war and it is nothing like this.”Private Smith has just finished his army basic training at Catterick and in three weeks his regiment is heading to Iraq for six months’ peace-keeping duty.”Seeing the images last week from the American troops was sickening enough, and we knew it was going to make our job so much harder in Iraq. They came back earlier this year and paraded through Preston Everything seemed to have gone well But morale has clearly collapsed at some point. They are not a fancy regiment but have been a darned good fish-and-chips regiment with citations right back to Waterloo.”The regimental museum at the barracks in Fulwood, Preston, was closed to the public yesterday, but in Catterick, North Yorkshire, where the Queen’s Lancashire soldiers had been garrisoned, people were unanimous in their condemnation.Private Chris Smith, 20, of the Royal Cheshire Regiment, said: “It is just not how we are taught to behave and it is certainly not what the public have come to expect of British troops. If soldiers are put in a position of untrammelled power over a prisoner, some, like all human beings, will behave badly, unless they are kept on the rails by regimental morale and discipline – just what was missing at Bloody Sunday.”I am surprised that the QLR .. have got into this mess, but morale goes up and down. They were passing round all sorts of pictures of prisoners being humiliated in the stress position We all know how bad that is Some were laughing about it.