protestantism
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: the inventive genius of John Donne
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…
Equipped for life with a copy of Thucydides
‘What distinguishes Cambridge from Oxford,’ wrote A.A. Milne in 1939, is that nobody who has been to Cambridge feels impelled…
Even Corbyn would find Thomas More’s Utopia too leftwing
Thomas More’s 1516 classic is a textbook for our troubled times, says William Cook
Is this the greatest sculpted version of the Easter story? It's certainly the strangest
In April 1501, about the time Michelangelo was returning from Rome to Florence to compete for the commission to carve…
The Irish Times: read by the smug denizens of Dublin 4 and responsible for the Celtic Tiger property bubble
The most successful newspapers have a distinct personality of their own with which their readers connect. In Britain, the Daily…
Why calling for an ‘Islamic Reformation’ is lazy and historically illiterate
What’s wrong with calls for an ‘Islamic Reformation’
Climate change, Bruegel-style
The world depicted by the Flemish master is not so different from our own, says Martin Gayford
The Tudor sleuth who's cracked the secret of suspense
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 through the 16th century
The Brethren, by Robert Merle, who died at the age of 95 ten years ago, was originally published in 1977,…
Thomas Cromwell: more Tony Soprano than Richard Dawkins
The travel writer Colin Thubron once told me that to understand a country and its people he first asks, ‘What…
What Englishmen learnt from 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 Huguenots, by Geoffrey Treasure - review
There could be no backsliding while preparing the next plot, murder or battle in the French Wars of Religion, says Hywel Williams
