Even as she lay dying, Edith Piaf carefully controlled the image that made her a star -- and 50 years after her death a legend -- in her native France and around the world.

At 47 and dying of liver cancer, Piaf ruled that only her personal photographer, Hugues Vassal, would be allowed to capture the images of her final days.

Opera maestro Giuseppe Verdi, whose bicentenary is being celebrated on Thursday, is "still alive" in Italy -- especially for the inhabitants of his native village of Busseto.

The world famous composer's family home is surprisingly humble. On a crossroads, the grocery owned by his parents is on just one floor and has a handful of rooms, including a small stable.

A rush of publishing start-ups and ever new ways to lure readers in an industry with Amazon breathing down its neck will be a central theme at the world's biggest book fair, opening in Germany on Wednesday.

Faced with competition from the online giant, publishers face an "imperative to be big", organizers of the Frankfurt Book Fair say, pointing to this year's merger to create Penguin Random House.

With artwork sprawled on queen-sized beds, hung in front of television sets and even placed on toilet counters, Hong Kong's Asia Contemporary Art Show has an unusual take on what constitutes an art gallery.

Hosted in a luxury hotel, the bi-annual fair caters for emerging artists hoping to break into global markets and the unorthodox venue is an attempt to reduce costs in a city fast becoming known as an international arts hub but where sky-high rents pose a challenge for artists and galleries.

Best-selling British author Alexander McCall Smith is to pen a new version of Jane Austen's classic novel "Emma" with a 21st century twist, his publisher announced on Friday.

McCall Smith, who has sold over 20 million copies of his "No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" series, said being commissioned to re-write Austen's 1815 original was "like being asked to eat a box of delicious chocolates".

The biggest exhibition of Matisse's paper cut-outs -- a technique the French artist invented in his final years -- is going on show in London, the Tate Modern gallery announced Friday.

"Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs" brings together around 120 works made between 1943 and his death in 1954.

Elite auction house Sotheby's on Friday adopted a poison-pill defense strategy to fend off a challenge by investor Dan Loeb's hedge fund Third Point.

Sotheby's announced a plan to expand its share base in a rights issue that aimed to weaken Loeb's push to force out the company's chairman and chief executive William Ruprecht, and take a seat on the board for himself.

Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani girl shot by the Taliban for campaigning for girls' schooling, added another award to a growing list on Friday.

She was given the RAW in WAR Anna Politkovskaya Award, named after the Russian investigative journalist who was shot dead seven years ago next Monday.

An Italian weekly said in its Friday edition that a new painting by Leonardo da Vinci of Renaissance noblewoman Isabella d'Este has been reliably authenticated with carbon dating.

The portrait, which was believed to have been either lost or never even painted, belongs to an Italian family which kept it in the vault of a Swiss bank, the Sette magazine reported.

A Chinese investment firm on Thursday announced plans to resurrect London's Crystal Palace, once the largest glass structure in the world.

The planned £500 million ($800 million, 600 million euro) re-creation by the ZhongRong Group is on the same size and scale as Joseph Paxton's original cast iron and plate glass masterpiece.