Arts feature
The man trying to save Britain’s last great map library
In the heart of Bloomsbury, deep in the bowels of the UCL geography department, down corridors floored in institutional linoleum,…
The wonder of the Bayeux Tapestry
How the Froggies must be laughing. Such a gracious loan. So kind. Like England lending Henry V’s longbows to the…
The truth about modelling for a great artist
Artists’ models seldom get a chance to tell their side of the story. Yet one model, Anthony Rudolf, believes they…
Renoir was a master – let no one tell you otherwise
It was summer 1874 at Claude Monet’s house in Argenteuil on the Seine just outside Paris. Édouard Manet arrived from…
The man who – inadvertently – invented the 1970s
Style, self-evidently among those who pursue an interest in such affairs, is, according to the Comte de Buffon, the man…
A triumphant adaptation of Game of Thrones
Wasn’t it Philomena Cunk who first observed that Shakespeare’s greatest work is Game of Thrones? She had a point. When…
In praise of postcards
In its campaign to preserve traditional British screen-free pleasures, English Heritage is promoting a variety of wholesome pastimes this summer,…
What’s the point of Unesco?
The FIM-92 Stinger missile is not a subtle weapon. An anti-aircraft rocket, capable of launching a high-explosive ‘fire and forget’…
The Victorian Hieronymus Bosch
No one paints fairyland like Richard Dadd (1817-86). In ‘The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke’, 1855-64, he reveals a teeming congregation of…
Three cheers for Britain’s most unabashedly elitist school
As we ponder the ups and downs of our sporting record this summer, it might be worth noting our unquestioned…
Artists vs the Odyssey
It’s a noble story of one man struggling against monstrous odds, valiantly captaining his crew while trying to avoid being…
Meet the last original punk still playing punk
It’s 50 years since an assortment of scruffy youths from the leafy suburb of Bromley, the grimy streets of Finsbury…
The uprising against ugly cities
Arriving in Oslo, the Barcode District is unavoidable. It is so named because its blocks are laid out like dominos…
The problem with ‘queer art’
In 1911 Duncan Grant’s ‘Bathing’ went on display as part of a design scheme for the dining room of the…
Three cheers for the new illustration museum
In the artistic pecking order, illustration long languished behind what were seen as the fine arts, even though it was…
The art of resurrecting forgotten artists
A retired priest in North Wales told me that after the war he had been asked by Billy Butlin to…
How the office has come to haunt us
Should we hop on a call? Let’s touch base. Let’s take this offline. Let’s circle back to your last slide…
Derek Jacobi on playing Lucian Freud
Lucian Freud almost had a second career in the cinema. He acted as an extra in a couple of films…
Peter Shaffer should be up there with the greats
Commercial success has a way of corroding critical regard. The more popular a playwright becomes, the more the critical establishment…
How Winston Churchill painted himself out of the darkness
At Chartwell, Sir Winston Churchill’s home of 42 years, now owned by the National Trust, lies his painting studio. Reached…
The art of flowers
Multi-sensory exhibitions are old hat, but in the case of In Bloom – How Plants Changed Our World at Oxford’s…
The dirty secrets of the Royal Festival Hall
The Festival of Britain – that much mythologised moment of national renewal – is wheeled out every time the country…
The genius of Zurbaran – and why he vanished
A pious Caravaggio JASPREET SINGH BOPARAI The Spanish painter Francisco de Zurbaran is sometimes thought of as a pious equivalent…
In defence of museum charges
It occurs to me only now that I might have spent far too much time in France. Indeed, so familiar…
The truth about artists’ optical aids
The first thing you see on entering this major new Viennese exhibition is not one of Canaletto and his nephew…
