Alexander Fiske-Harrison

Sneer of cold command: Velázquez’s portrait of the Count-Duke of Olivares, Philip IV’s ‘Ozymandias-like vizier’ (detail)

Spain’s golden age — with a silver lining

18 July 2015 9:00 am

As every schoolboy knows, ‘the empire on which the sun never set’ was British, and ‘blue-blooded’ was a phrase applied…

I guarded Rudolf Hess

15 November 2014 9:00 am

I had the misfortune to meet Lord Richards on probably the darkest day of his 42 years in the military.…

Does the world need 17 volumes of Hemingway's letters?

26 October 2013 9:00 am

‘In the years since 1961 Hemingway’s reputation as “the outstanding author since the death of Shakespeare” shrank to the extent…