His final masterpiece will illuminate the external dome of St Paul’s Cathedral to celebrate the artist and poet’s birthday.

Blake described Ancient Of Days 1827 as “the best I have ever finished”.

The artist wanted his work to adorn the walls of churches and public buildings but his dream was not realised during his lifetime.

Martin Myrone, senior curator of pre-1800 British art at Tate Britain, said: “He had a lifelong ambition to see his paintings painted on a large scale….

“It was never going to happen. It was a pipe dream.

“Ancient Of Days is the very last thing he was working on.

“It’s the thing he was colouring and painting in the very last days of his life.

“He is said to have stated it is the best thing he has ever done.

“It’s an extraordinary work of art.”

A projection of the work will be seen on the south side of the dome.

The actual work itself, an illustration for Blake’s book Europe A Prophecy, is only 17cm by 23cm.

It shows a long-haired, bearded figure crouching from the heavens.

“It represents an idea of a perhaps rather oppressive, law giving judgmental God,” the curator said.

“Blake was a very committed Christian but he had his own interpretation of religion….

“What you see is a realisation of a judging God looming from the heavens.”

Blake’s birthday is November 28, when he would have been 262 years old.

He died in 1827, aged 69.

His talent was not widely…

Raheel Arif is being inducted into Denny Old Parish Church linked with Haggs Parish Church and will become its first full-time spiritual leader for five and a half years.

The 47-year-old said he was very excited about taking up this “wonderful and priceless ministry” in the Falkirk Council district.

Mr Arif and his wife Humaira and their children, Rhea and Roshaan, fled to Scotland from Pakistan in September 2011 after extremists threatened their lives because of their faith.

At the time, he was the vice-principal of a secondary school in Peshawar, partly run by the state, and the only Christian out of a staff of 52.

Mr Arif said a plot was mounted against him and his conspirators tried to have him arrested for blasphemy.

They were unsuccessful but a complaint led to him being demoted to his previous role as a biology teacher and his enemies then turned their attention to his family.

Mr Arif took his wife and children to Grangemouth to visit his cousin Rev Aftab Gohar, minister of Abbotsgrange Parish Church, in the summer of 2011 to lie low until things got back to normal.

But when they returned to Peshawar two months later it quickly became clear that his enemies would never leave them in peace so they decided to return to Scotland and seek asylum.

Mr Arif, who grew up in a Christian family and was very active in his local church in Pakistan and involved in…

The 30-year-old said he upped the compensation claim by A$4m to include potential lost earnings from match performances and sponsorship deals.

In a claim filed on Wednesday he also said the Wallabies would have had a “superior performance” at the Rugby World Cup in September if he had been playing.

Folau, who was one of Australia’s highest-paid athletes, was fired in May after he made comments on social media that Rugby Australia deemed “anti-gay”.

Folau posted on his Instagram account in April that read: “Drunks, homosexuals, adulterers, liars, fornicators, thieves, atheists and idolators – Hell awaits you.”

A panel found him guilty of a “high level breach’ of the players” code of conduct and upheld a decision by Rugby Australia to sack him.

Folau’s case will be heard in the Federal Circuit Court in February 2020.

In June, Folau raised more than A$2m in a crowdfunding campaign to help with court fees.

An earlier fundraiser on GoFundMe was shut down by the company from promoting discrimination.

Last week Folau was criticised by Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison for saying that the country’s deadly bushfires were linked to the nation’s stance on abortion and same-sex marriage.

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Ball, 87, was jailed at the Old Bailey in 2015 for sexual offences against 18 young men over three decades.

The self-styled confidant to the Prince of Wales was released from prison in 2017, having served 16 months.

A spokesman for Charles previously said it remained “a matter of deep regret” that he and others were “deceived” by the clergyman.

After his release, Ball went to live with his twin brother Michael Ball in Cornwall before they moved to Langport, Somerset.

An inquest in Taunton heard Ball suffered ill health and depression in the years leading up to his death.

On June 4 this year, he was admitted to Musgrove Park Hospital in Taunton before being discharged on June 12.

He was readmitted the next day following a fall, having sustained fractures to his rib and left clavicle.

Ball was discharged on 20th June but fell while attempting to climb stairs to his bedroom hours later.

He died at Musgrove Park Hospital on the morning of 21st June from respiratory failure and multiple rib fractures.

Tony Williams, senior coroner for Somerset, concluded that Ball’s death was accidental.

“Peter Ball suffered a number of falls during which he has sustained multiple rib fractures and gone on to develop a fatal respiratory failure,” the coroner said.

“He was a retired bishop. My conclusion will be one of accidental death.”

The inquest was not attended by members of Ball’s family…

Speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live’s Emma Barnett on Wednesday, Most Rev Justin Welby was first asked about his response to the Chief Rabbi’s comments, where Ephraim Mirvis said many Jews are scared of a Labour Government.

The Archbishop repeated the support he gave the Chief Rabbi online, saying: “Obviously I know him quite well and when you look at his article, he talks about it being one of the most painful decisions he’s ever had to take and I know that’s true. His instincts, like mine and others, are that during an election you keep schtum, you say nothing. And a lot of people in the Jewish community were saying ‘you’ve got to speak’ and he felt that there was no choice.”

When asked if Jeremy Corbyn should say sorry over anti-Semitism, the Archbishop replied: “I can’t comment on him and we’re in an election period, I’m not going to comment on individuals. I think one of the things we’ve learned in the Church of England is that repentance, which is a sort of technical churchy kind of word, means both acknowledging where things have gone wrong but also changing course and action. All parties and all parts of our society have this profound history of anti-Semitism going back hundreds and hundreds of years, in which the church has also been caught up scandalously, appallingly.

“What we published last week was about saying ‘we have to acknowledge our own guilt’ and…