The road to independence
Alone with her father’s dead body, Olive Piper says, ‘I don’t know anything, except what I feel, and how can…
Wings of desire
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
‘I will do something sooner or later,’ wrote Beatrix Potter in the secret diary she kept in a private code.…
Bookends: Tilling tales
Several years ago, I listed as my literary heroes Herbert Pocket in Great Expectations and E. F. Benson’s Lucia. The…
