Painting on the precipice

Holbein Elizabeth Goldring (Paul Mellon Centre, £40) ACCORDING ...

King Henry VIII and the Barber Surgeons

Taking as many guises as his names, the Prince of Lies turned at times into a man-devouring ogre, a mutant medley of claws, horns and wings, or the brooding rebel that lit the imagination of Romantic painters, as Carla Passino discovers

Capturing the immediacy of fighting and the writhing bodies of soldiers, as well as keeping narrative clarity, proved enormously difficult for painters depicting battles before the advent of photography. Michael Hall reveals how they rose to the challenge

A quest to find Horace Walpole’s missing Ottoman dagger unveiled a story of 16th-century diplomacy, Victorian theatre and a notorious heist

Anne Boleyn dropped suggestive hints and Elizabeth I projected undying monarchy through her portraits: Tudor women knew how to use art to send a message, Philippa Gregory tells Carla Passino