Christian Brückner, the prime suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, has refused to be interviewed by the Metropolitan Police, days before he is due to be released from a German prison.

The 49-year-old, who denies any involvement in the case, remains the focus of investigations by British, German and Portuguese police nearly two decades on from the three-year-old’s kidnapping.

Who is he?
A “drifter and a petty criminal”, Brückner was a teenager when he was first convicted of sexual abuse of a child, in 1994, said The i Paper. A year later he fled to Portugal to escape custody, before returning to Germany in 1999 to finish his sentence. After being released the following year, he returned intermittently to Portugal. He is now nearing the end of a seven-year prison sentence for the rape of a 72-year-old American tourist in Praia da Luz in 2005, two years before McCann disappeared from the same Algarve town.

Why is he a suspect?
In 2020, the German authorities named Brückner as an official suspect in the McCann case. He “is not just our No.1 suspect, he’s the only suspect”, Hans Christian Wolters, the lead German prosecutor investigating the disappearance, told the BBC last month. There is evidence that indicates Brückner is “responsible” for the toddler’s disappearance and death, Wolters said, but it is “not strong enough to make a guilty verdict likely”, so he hasn’t been arrested or charged.

What happened with the Met?
In the run-up to Brückner’s release tomorrow, the Met Police requested an interview that “for legal reasons” could only be done via an international letter of request. He refused.

DCI Mark Cranwell, the senior investigating officer for Operation Grange, confirmed that Brückner “remains a suspect in the Metropolitan Police’s own investigation” and “in the absence of an interview, we will nevertheless continue to pursue any viable lines of inquiry”.

German law enforcement authorities have voiced concerns that Brückner might flee the country when he leaves prison.

Plans by The National Gallery to build a £400 million extension and include 20th century works in its displays pose a direct threat to the rival Tate museum group, according to insiders.

Around £375 million “has already been quietly raised behind the scenes” for the National’s Project Domani, said The Art Newspaper – an “astonishing achievement”. But the decision to start collecting more modern works could create “bad blood” with Tate, a source associated with the group told The Guardian. Another said it could put the two museums “at each other’s throats”.

‘Old rivalry’
The National Gallery is best known for its collection of Old Masters and 19th century paintings, including works by Renoir, Monet and Van Gogh. But “for decades”, said The Guardian, there’s been “tension” with the Tate over which institution “should be allowed to collect ‘modern’ art”. 
Thirty years ago, an “official” agreement was reached that the National would stick to a “cut-off point” at 1900, but that “has never sat well with bosses at Trafalgar Square”. The announcement that the gallery now plans to start collecting paintings from across the entire 20th century is a “shift that could revive an old rivalry”.

“As 1900 gets further and further away, it will be natural for us to tell the bigger story,” said the National’s director, Gabriele Finaldi, insisting that the new acquisition strategy would be enacted in “collaboration” with Tate. The funds raised by the National so far include “the two largest ever known cash donations to any cultural institution, not just in Britain but globally”, he said.

‘Dazzling coup’
It's a “dazzling coup”, said Alastair Sooke in The Telegraph, but when the “applause dies away”, there will be “fundamental questions” to answer about whether Project Domani will “throw into confusion the respective roles of The National Gallery and Tate”. Although Tate “officially might be all smiles”, behind the scenes the group “must be bricking it” over plans that surely represent a “land grab”. 

Project Domani comes at a particularly sensitive time for Tate, which has suffered a fall in visitor numbers and a “cash crisis” leading to redundancies, said Jonathan Jones in The Guardian. Tate has put a brave face on the situation, recently channelling the “mythic rock band” Spinal Tap when it said that “its audience was not shrinking; just becoming more selective”.

Queen Elizabeth’s cousin Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, stands with his daughter Lady Helen Taylor as his wife’s coffin is carried into Westminster Cathedral. Today’s Requiem Mass for Katharine, Duchess of Kent, was the first Catholic funeral for a British royal in modern times.

Paul Grover / WPA Pool / Shutterstock

Donald Trump’s state visit to the UK this week includes overnight stays at Windsor Castle, where the president will also be wined and dined by King Charles and Queen Camilla at a ceremonial banquet. Nabbing such a splendid dinner spot with the King is trickier for the rest of us, but we can still feel the presence of royalty with a trip to one of Britain’s other palaces. 

Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire
For the “wow factor”, head straight to Blenheim Palace (pictured above), said The Telegraph. Built in the early 18th century for John Churchill, the first Duke of Marlborough, to celebrate his victory in the Battle of Blenheim, the “flamboyantly baroque” palace is “beautifully” sited within a Capability Brown landscape, with gentle slopes, mature trees and a glittering lake.

Hampton Court Palace, London
Sprawling amid “lavishly decorated gardens in London’s southwest fringes”, Hampton Court Palace was King Henry VIII’s favourite residence, said Lonely Planet. Inside, highlights include the “legendary” Haunted Gallery, said to be visited by the ghosts of two of Henry’s ill-fated wives, Jane Seymour and Catherine Howard. The palace also has some of the capital’s “loveliest grounds”.

The Palace of Holyroodhouse, Edinburgh
The King’s official residence in Scotland was the former home of Mary Queen of Scots before she “literally lost her head” on the orders of her cousin Elizabeth I, said The Independent. The “grand”, sprawling building is now open year-round to the public, who can have a “good old nosy” around the state apartments and see the “remarkable” Throne Room where Queen Elizabeth II’s coffin was laid to rest overnight in 2022.

Nigel Farage must stand up to pound-shop Mussolini
Melanie Phillips in The Times
The “majority” of people at Saturday’s “Unite The Kingdom” rally were “decent types” who are concerned about mass immigration, writes Melanie Phillips. But organiser Tommy Robinson is an “ex-member of the neo-Nazi British National Party” with “numerous criminal convictions”. Nigel Farage must “publicly draw lines in the sand” between himself and this “thuggish demagogue” and make it clear that, while “defending the nation’s integrity” is “entirely proper”, Robinson “stands for extremism” and “violence”.

Americans have 400 days to save their democracy
Timothy Garton Ash in The Guardian
I spent the summer in America, writes Timothy Garton Ash, and “I was shaken every day by the speed and executive brutality” of Donald Trump’s “assault” on US democracy, and by the “desperate weakness of resistance” to it. The country needs Congress, “the principal check on presidential power”, to “start doing its job again”. “All democrats, irrespective of party or ideology, must hope” that the Democratic Party regains control of Congress in November’s midterm elections.

Why I like Pope Leo
Melanie McDonagh in The Spectator
There were “no surprises” in Pope Leo’s first interview, writes Melanie McDonagh. “Pope revolted at obscene wealth and the growing gap between rich and poor? Jesus Christ wasn’t keen on the rich either.” Leo avoided “religious language”, though, and used terms that “non-churchy people can engage with”. Some will be “restive” that he didn’t “talk more” about faith, but he “knows who he serves” and “comes across as a pope with his priorities right”.