protestantism
The furious tug of war between 18th-century Whigs and Tories
George Owers evokes the seismic cultural divisions between the parties – with different coffee houses attended, wines drunk, doctors consulted and fashions preferred
The radical power of sentimentality
Ferdinand Mount identifies three distinct sentimental revolutions – in the 11th, 18th and 20th centuries – that transformed legal frameworks and social structures as well as hearts and minds
The stark, frugal world of Piet Mondrian
In September 1940 the Dutch abstract artist Piet Mondrian arrived in New York, a refugee from war and the London…
A pure original
John Donne sounds like nobody else, and his poems invite us to feel that we might know him, says Daniel Swift
The end of brotherly love
You can never completely leave a religious cult, as this strange and touching memoir demonstrates. Patterns of thinking, turns of…
An Oxford treasure trove
‘What distinguishes Cambridge from Oxford,’ wrote A.A. Milne in 1939, is that nobody who has been to Cambridge feels impelled…
Lessons from Utopia
Thomas More’s 1516 classic is a textbook for our troubled times, says William Cook
Lime light
In April 1501, about the time Michelangelo was returning from Rome to Florence to compete for the commission to carve…
Protestants preferred
The most successful newspapers have a distinct personality of their own with which their readers connect. In Britain, the Daily…
Faith in freedom
What’s wrong with calls for an ‘Islamic Reformation’
Bruegel’s Bethlehem
The world depicted by the Flemish master is not so different from our own, says Martin Gayford
The burning issue of the age
Some reviewers are slick and quick. Rapid readers, they remember everything, take no notes, quote at will. I’m the plodding…
A jaunty romp of rape and pillage
The Brethren, by Robert Merle, who died at the age of 95 ten years ago, was originally published in 1977,…
The Putney boy done good
The travel writer Colin Thubron once told me that to understand a country and its people he first asks, ‘What…
The lure of Europe
A tour of the Continent was a prerequisite for young Jacobean noblemen training for statesmanship — provided they resisted its corrupting influence, says Blair Worden
The plight of the predestined
There could be no backsliding while preparing the next plot, murder or battle in the French Wars of Religion, says Hywel Williams
