There’s no shortage of great picks at this year’s TEFAF Maastricht, the Netherlands, including a Barbara Hepworth sculpture, a pastel portrait by Dora Maar and two sections of 4th-century Roman mosaics

Such was George III’s passion for astronomy that he had an observatory built to observe the transit of Venus. Although his interest remains unrivalled, scientific curiosity gripped the Royal Family for centuries, as Matthew Dennison reveals

Globetrotter’s diary

John Tolan Islam A new history from Muhammad to the present 304pp. Princeton University Press. £25 (US $29.95). James McDougall Worlds of Islam A global history 608pp. Allen Lane. £40. Elizabeth Drays

The elevator pitch made this trip sound very glamorous, but it’s nearing 43ºC and I’ve been stooping around in the desert for over an hour, eyes fixed on the arid earth. We’re in the Turkana Basin in

In Caravaggio’s “St Matthew and the Angel” (1602), the Bible seems to arrive as a shock to those who wrote it. Matthew, bare-armed and dirty-toed, is a fisherman stranded on dry land. Everything about