Ota Benga (second from left) and fellow countrymen at the St Louis World’s Fair, 1904 Photograph: University of South CarolinaOta Benga (second from left) and fellow countrymen at the St Louis World’s Fair, 1904 Photograph: University of South CarolinaThe long readRaceIn 1904, Ota Benga was kidnapped from Congo and taken to the US, where he was exhibited with monkeys. His appalling story reveals the roots of a racial prejudice that still haunts us

Viola Davis and Julia Roberts are starring in a movie version of Jodi Picoult‘s novel “Small Great Things” for Amblin Partners. The attachment of Davis comes a day after she won a SAG Award for best supporting actress for “Fences.

RelationshipsMore and more women are discovering after years of marriage to men, and having had children, that they are lesbians. Were they always – or is sexuality more fluid?For Carren Strock, the revelation came when she was 44. She had met her husband – "a terrific guy, very sweet" – at high school when she was 16, had been married to him for 25 years, had two dearly loved children, and what she describes as a "

The ObserverHistory booksReviewRobert Tombs’s lucid, definitive and delightful history is a triumphThe English and Their History, by the Professor of French history at Cambridge, Robert Tombs, is a work of supreme intelligence. Intelligence cuts its way through orthodoxy, dogmas, traditions and shibboleths rather as engineers hack their way through forests and mountains, slice open outcrops of nature and forge exciting new routes to old destinations. In this vigorous, subtle and penetrating book, Tombs defies the proprieties of our politically motivated national history curriculum to rethink and revise notions of national identity.

A group of African American friends who were celebrating a birthday with their children at a Buffalo Wild Wings in Illinois have told how they were asked to move tables to appease a pair of 'racist' regular customers.  Mary Vahl, 34, and her husband Justin, together with their two children, say they arrived at the restaurant in Naperville, Illinois, on Saturday October 26, asking for a table of 18, only to be asked by the host what 'race' the party was.