Don’t cancel Beatrix Potter
Don’t cancel Beatrix Potter
Second chances: The Marble Staircase, by Elizabeth Fair, reviewed
To reject ‘in rainy middle age the poignant emotions that belonged to youth and Italy’ is the lesson learned by…
The 17th century painter who hacked her way through Suriname in search of insects
Maria Sibylla Merian was a game old bird of entrepreneurial bent, with an overwhelming obsession with insects. Born in Frankfurt…
The art of Beatrix Potter
Her best illustrations — limpid, ethereal, carefully observed — are masterly works of art in their own right, argues Matthew Dennison
Osbert Lancaster: a national treasure rediscovered
True to his saw that ours is ‘a land of rugged individualists’, Osbert Lancaster, in his self-appointed role of popular…
Why is the garden absent in English painting?
One of the default settings of garden journalists is the adjective ‘painterly’ — applied to careful colour harmonies within a…
Colonel Blood: thief turned spy and Royal pensioner
In the words of one of his contemporaries ‘a man of down look, lean-faced and full of pock holes’, the…
Wellington's PR machine
The history of portraiture is festooned with images of sitters overwhelmed by dress, setting and the accoutrements of worldly success.…
The merry monarch and his mistresses; was sex for Charles II a dangerous distraction?
In a tone of breezy bravado in keeping with their concept of their subject’s character, Don Jordan and Michael Walsh…
Elizabeth is about to become Britain’s longest-reigning queen. Here’s how she’s changed monarchy
This year the Queen will become the longest-serving monarch in British history. Her rule defines our era
Snow - art’s biggest challenge
In owning a flock of artificial sheep, Joseph Farquharson must have been unusual among Highland lairds a century ago. His…
Fifty years of Inspector Wexford – and a new detective on the block
Early on in The Girl Next Door, Ruth Rendell gives the reader a sharp nudge. ‘Colin Quell had very little…
You’ll never look at dried pasta in the same way again
A calculated ordinariness unites the protagonists in Graham Swift’s new collection of short stories. In each of these mini fictions,…
Not quite romantic fiction, or literary fiction, or commercial fiction – but still quite good
Elements of Raffaella Barker’s new novel, her eighth for adults, suggest commercial fiction: a narrative that oscillates between the aftermath…
Margaret Drabble tries to lose the plot
Halfway through her new novel, Margaret Drabble tells us of Anna, the pure gold baby of the title, ‘There was…
The imitable Jeeves
For as long as I can remember — I take neither pleasure nor pride in the admission — I have…
