To mark the tercentenary of Sir John Vanbrugh’s death, Charles Saumarez Smith considers the changing reactions to one of his greatest creations, Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire

Repton Priory, Derbyshire Within the curtilage of Repton School

The historian, author and former director of planning and development at English Heritage tells Anne Cuthbertson about his life and work in the capital

“Johannes Vermeer is the most laconic of the Dutch old masters,” Andrew Graham-Dixon once remarked, adding that this “may explain why he has been the cause of so much volubility in others”. A quarter

The sale of a Fabergé imperial egg and a 15th-century triptych made headlines last year, but one of the most powerful pieces was a painting by Richard Parkes Bonington showing what he could have become, had he not died so young

Without the generosity of one remarkable man, Sir James Roberts, the Brontë Parsonage Museum might never have come to be. Roberts’ own rags-to-riches story sounds like something from a book. He was bo