From George Stubbs’s golden vision of the labourer’s place in society to Ford Madox Brown’s heroically monumental celebration of manual labour, artists gave individual interpretations of work, as Michael Hall reveals

In my current project, I don’t quite know what I’m doing, though I’m hoping to strike lucky. As with metal detectorists and those who browse the shelves of charity shops for Ming vases, my hope is alw

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

Exaggerating her beetling monobrow and wispy dark moustache in self-portraits, the artist Frida Kahlo was a female force to be reckoned with, unafraid to pour her heart onto the canvas. Only last autu

A Queer Inheritance: Alternative Histories in the National ...

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