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

Catherine Clarke A History of England in 25 Poems400pp. Allen Lane. £25. Mark Forsyth Rhyme and ReasonA short history of poetry and people (forpeople who don’t usually read poetry)368pp. Allen & Unwin

Collecting fields often have holy grails, and in medieval illuminated manuscripts one is the Roman d’Alexandre or Romance of Alexander. The 20cm-tall book, written in Old French and illustrated with 1

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

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

Although I realise that it is a favourite pastime among historians, particularly the British, to demonstrate that our idols have feet of clay, I must protest at the inclusion of Winston Churchill in t