Our first news round-up of the week takes a look at the failing health of the National Poet of Nepal, a collection of photographs that has gone up for sale and the 55^thanniversary of the death of Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet.

Madhav Prasad Ghimire Re-admitted to Hospital

Last week we reported on the National poet of Nepal who is in his nineties and had been flown to a hospital in Indian for treatment as the hospital in Nepal where he was being treated did not have the facilities to help with his condition.

Whilst the treatment in India was a success and the poet had returned to Nepal, he has since relapsed and been re-admitted to hospital in Nepal. He is suffering with internal bleeding in his small intestine and is currently being treated in the High care unit of the Grande Hospital in Dhapasi.

The doctors have advised his family that he needs to be moved to another hospital as they do not have the appropriate equipment to treat his condition; he had only been back in Nepal for a few hours before he relapsed.

The Delhi hospital where he had been treated used Endoscopy, Colonoscopy and Capsule Endoscopy technology to control his haemorrhaging.

Rare Collection of Photographs Goes up for Sale

Charles Darwin

A rare collection of photographs, known as the “Norman Album” which is currently housed at Dimbola Lodge in Freshwater Bay in the Isle of Wight has been put up for sale. The album which has been given a price tag of £3.7 million may well be set to leave the country in a move that has been branded a national disgrace

The photographs which were taken by Julia Margaret Cameron who was a pioneering Victoria era photographer include images of the poet Alfred Tennyson, Charles Darwin and other important historical figures from the time; the collection was compiled between 1864 and 1869. In total the album contains 74 albumen prints and it is one of only 10 that is known to be in existence.

The sale of the album is a last resort on the part if the Dimbola Trust who say that the costs of keeping such an album are just too restrictive. They had originally hoped to form a partnership with the Arts Council so that they could keep it but the £1 million they would have had to raise to achieve this was beyond their reach.

In February a temporary export bar had been placed on the album, but this has now been lifted.

55^thAnniversary of the Death of Nazim Hikmet

The Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet was commemorated yesterday with a ceremony that took place at the Novodevichy cemetery in Moscow. The ceremony marked 55 years since the poet’s death.

Recitations of Hikmet’s poems took place during the ceremony and the Turkish ambassador to Russia gave a speech. The ceremony, which was also attended by several prominent Turkish and Russian poets ended with clover being laid on his grave.

Hikmet, who is possibly best known for his poem “The Little Girl of Hiroshima” was born in Turkey but spent much of his life in Russia when he was forced to flee persecution in Turkey in the post-World War II era.