Pebbles
P-p-pick up a pebble. Feel its weight in your palm. Roll it over under your thumb. Any good? Not sure?…
Home truths
Can we know an artist by their house, asks Laura Freeman
Curtain calls
‘And now the end is here / And so I face the final curtain…’ You said it, Frank. The lights…
Getting things mended
‘Sides to middle’, that’s the cry. When your foot goes through the flat sheet in the night, there’s only one…
Thrills, frills and folderols
A clever, original exhibition at the Wallace Collection has Laura Freeman twirling her way through the West End
Hell’s kitchens
When did they get so expensive?
Last post
It’s the thin end of the wedge, the slippery slope, the beginning of the end of a civilised Christmas. It…
Mistletoe
Give us a snog. Pucker up at the Christmas party. Kiss me quick at the Nativity play. Will you be…
The telling moment
A Tatler photographer once told me that the secret to taking a good photo was the three Ts: tum, tits,…
Whatnots to like
The joy of a cluttered museum
High Jencks
An editor once told me: always look at the loos. It was remarkable, she said, how many grand cultural projets,…
Leotards
Jules Léotard was blessed in his name. It might have been quite different had he been called, say, Jules Droupé.…
Talking to a brick wall at the National Trust
Press officers, breathe easy. This is not another column attacking the National Trust. Actually, I tell a lie. It is.…
Fit for a king
What is the National Gallery playing at? Why, in this summer of stop-start tropical storms, is the NG making visitors…
Wildness and wit
Heads turn, strangers gawp, matrons tut or look in envy. A man doffs his bowler hat knowing when he is…
The art of government
What politicians’ paintings say about them
Alarm bells
The pitfalls of choosing a wedding reading
Affronted
The problem with London’s fake facades
Great Scottie
On eBay I have an alert set for ‘Scottie Wilson’. Nine times out of ten, it’s a diamanté Scottie dog…
Painted out
Sixty years ago, women were still excluded from the art history canon, says Laura Freeman
Woman of the cloth
Laura Freeman considers how artists have depicted one of the strangest and most touching of the Stations of the Cross
Blanket restrictions
The stifling cult of self-care
Raw Bacon
Francis Bacon once told the art critic Richard Cork: ‘I certainly hope I’ll go on till I drop dead.’ Max…
Blessed be the fruit
Laura Freeman is transported by J.C. Volkamer’s astonishingly beautiful ode to the citrus
Let us pray
Will churches ever fully reopen?
