monasteries
Was Serbia the real birthplace of the Renaissance?
Where did the Renaissance begin? There has been an official answer to that question since 1550, the date that Giorgio…
Magical mountains
A magnificent new history of the Caucasus earns Peter Frankopan’s highest praise
The Spectator’s Notes
‘Interior silence’ is not a phrase I associate with Sarah Sands, until recently the editor of the BBC Today programme…
Holiday retreats
It was the 13th-century wall of a ruined Cistercian nunnery at the far end of her garden in Norfolk that…
Downside’s downfall
The dissolution of a monastery
A world apart
Holed up in her sixth-floor London flat, Laura Freeman finds solace in the art of the hermit
