William Morris
William Morris’s debt to Islam
When William Morris was born in Walthamstow, in 1834, it was little more than a clump of marshland at the…
A walled garden in Suffolk yields up its secrets
When Olivia Laing began restoring the former property of a garden designer, she had no idea of the beauty that lay hidden by rampant weeds
The folly of garden cities
In his 1981 autobiography A Better Class of Person, the playwright John Osborne described an encounter he’d recently had with…
Is May Morris a feminist cause – a woman of genius unfairly overlooked?
You may think you don’t know May Morris, daughter of William, but you’ll probably have come across her wallpaper. Her…
Split decision
Think back to that morning in September 1967 when the Light Programme was split in two, Tony Blackburn launching Radio…
V&A's Botticelli Reimagined has too many desperate pretenders
When Tom Birkin, hero of J.L. Carr’s novel A Month in the Country, wakes from sleeping in the sun, it…
Mighty monuments — or neo-Gothic horrors?
Briefing his illustrator for the jacket of A Handful of Dust (1934), Evelyn Waugh asked for a country house in…
The perils of porcelain – and the pleasures of Edmund de Waal
A.S. Byatt on the dark, deadly secrets lurking beneath a calm, white surface
The only art is Essex
When I went to visit Edward Bawden he vigorously denied that there were any modern painters in Essex. That may…
The world of Thessyros: an icky erotic fantasy
Lore has it that those viewing naughty books in the British Museum could once do so only with the Archbishop…
Jeremy Deller is lost in Walthamstow
At the Venice Biennale last year, Jeremy Deller presented English Magic in the British Pavilion. It was an aggressive look…
