Norway’s eccentric royals make Britain’s look mundane
It’s not hard to see why the 93-year-old, wheelchair-bound Princess Astrid of Norway might feel that now is the moment…
Down the rabbit hole
Don’t cancel Beatrix Potter
Second chances
To reject ‘in rainy middle age the poignant emotions that belonged to youth and Italy’ is the lesson learned by…
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
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…
Portrait or landscape?
One of the default settings of garden journalists is the adjective ‘painterly’ — applied to careful colour harmonies within a…
It takes a thief…
In the words of one of his contemporaries ‘a man of down look, lean-faced and full of pock holes’, the…
Making faces
The history of portraiture is festooned with images of sitters overwhelmed by dress, setting and the accoutrements of worldly success.…
A cavalcade of plump lovelies
In a tone of breezy bravado in keeping with their concept of their subject’s character, Don Jordan and Michael Walsh…
Long to reign over us
This year the Queen will become the longest-serving monarch in British history. Her rule defines our era
Snow men
In owning a flock of artificial sheep, Joseph Farquharson must have been unusual among Highland lairds a century ago. His…
Fifty years of crime-writing
Early on in The Girl Next Door, Ruth Rendell gives the reader a sharp nudge. ‘Colin Quell had very little…
Extra-ordinary
A calculated ordinariness unites the protagonists in Graham Swift’s new collection of short stories. In each of these mini fictions,…
To the lighthouse
Elements of Raffaella Barker’s new novel, her eighth for adults, suggest commercial fiction: a narrative that oscillates between the aftermath…
Unconditional love
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…
