After early profligate years in Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire, Francis Grant traded sporting scenes for portraits and climbed the ladder to become president of the Royal Academy. A forthcoming exhibition at Dickinson does justice to his drawing

In a John Behan bronze, collector Jacqueline O’Donovan, a child of the Irish diaspora, can sense the desperation of a starving people forced to flee their land

A cyanotype of a fern leaf by early photographer Anna Atkins soared above its estimate in Surrey and ‘the most striking likeness’ of Horatio Nelson is drawing every eye at the LAPADA Fair

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

In winter the bones of the formal garden at Owlpen Manor come to life. Highlighted with frost, the dark greens and greys of hedges and topiary take on the patina of an engraving. The manicured parterr

Stanley Spencer’s talent for seeing the spiritual in the everyday, his stirring sense for the wonder of Nature and his love for the landscapes of Berkshire and Suffolk shaped his art, as Matthew Dennison reveals