Matthew Dennison

Susan Hill

The road to independence

25 March 2017 9:00 am

Alone with her father’s dead body, Olive Piper says, ‘I don’t know anything, except what I feel, and how can…

‘Cassava with White Peacock Butterfly and young Golden Tegu’, 1702–3, by Maria Merian

Wings of desire

5 May 2016 1:00 pm

Maria Sibylla Merian was a game old bird of entrepreneurial bent, with an overwhelming obsession with insects. Born in Frankfurt…

Cecily Parsley makes cowslip wine, illustration from‘Cecily Parsley’s Nursery Rhymes’ by Beatrix Potter

The art of Beatrix Potter

10 December 2015 3:00 pm

‘I will do something sooner or later,’ wrote Beatrix Potter in the secret diary she kept in a private code.…

Bookends: Tilling tales

21 April 2012 10:00 am

Several years ago, I listed as my literary heroes Herbert Pocket in Great Expectations and E. F. Benson’s Lucia. The…