Discover wildly different courting customs and the origin of international wedding traditions

Samurai rose to be global emblems of honour and courage, but their story doesn’t always match the myths they told about themselves, as a British Museum exhibition shows

It’s out with winter blues and in with the blossoming prunus, unless it happens to be English pottery. Lucien de Guise finds out what Coalport brought to the tableware

A Russia of trees and liberty and peace: ...

Amateur botanist John Bradby Blake and his collaborators never completed their illustrated record of Chinese flora, but they still stoked Britain’s passion for the Asian country’s plants

Why we need orchestras