Symbolism

Cooking up a storm of memories – Bee Wilson’s kitchenalia

10 May 2025 9:00 am

A baking tin, a toast rack and a soup tureen conjure poignant reminders of the past - while Wilson’s wedding ring is transformed into the world’s smallest pastry cutter

Andrew Motion pays tribute to his poetic mentors

20 May 2023 9:00 am

In a second memoir, Motion focuses on how he became a poet, and his search for father figures, including W.H. Auden and Philip Larkin

The Englishman who saved Japan’s cherry blossoms

23 March 2019 9:00 am

Between 1639 and 1853, seeds and scions of flowering cherry trees travelled across Japan to Edo (present-day Tokyo). Each came…

What does ‘Guernica’ really symbolise?

11 November 2017 9:00 am

It takes a bold author to open his book about ‘Guernica’ with a quotation from the Spanish artist Antonio Saura…

Mother Medea

8 July 2017 9:00 am

Medea’s continuing hold over spinners of tall tales from Euripides to Chaucer to Pasolini needs little explanation; she’s an archetype…

What narrative can be teased out of Gustave Caillebotte’s ‘The Bridge of Europe’?

The art critic who loved to provoke the Establishment

14 May 2016 9:00 am

Richard Dorment doesn’t do whimsy. Or Stanley Spencer. He’s a fan of Cy Twombly and Brice Marden, Gilbert and George…