silver

The shards of heaven beneath our feet

1 February 2025 9:00 am

All precious stones are ‘earthly versions of the flickering lights in the night’s sky’, writes Philip Marsden, in a dazzling exploration of the minerals that make up our planet

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

Stately Spanish galleons with gold moidores

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…