You wouldn’t guess from the cover design—three songbirds silhouetted over swatches of picturesque Englishness—but Catherine Clarke’s A History of England in 25 Poems hits one of its sweet spots with a

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

For artist Nellie Shepherd, the landscape outside her painstakingly renovated farmhouse is just as important as the colourful scene inside it

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

Why homeowners are rediscovering the traditional practice of decorating with tapestries

The most sensual pictures of women sprang from Ovid’s verses, the Aeneid gave Turner his longest-lasting subject matter and Edward Burne-Jones saw himself in Arthur’s deathless slumber. Carla Passino explores how literature influenced art