Johannes Vermeer brightened his native Delft with luminous pictures of women caught in intimate moments, but the serenity of his work, of which he produced remarkably little, is at odds with a life mired in debt, as Carla Passino discovers

Between a Constable resonating with Nature and a Castiglione blaring with turbulence, a picture by Algernon Newton captured the quietude of absolute stillness

Opera is dead. And has been for quite a long time. I don’t care what anybody says about Poulenc and Prokofiev, I cannot be persuaded that any listenable music theatre has been written since Puccini. (

I absolutely love this painting; it is so intriguing and there is so much to look at. Apart from the quality of the painting itself and the awe-inspiring brushwork, the subject matter and intensity of

I absolutely love this painting; it is so intriguing and there is so much to look at. Apart from the quality of the painting itself and the awe-inspiring brushwork, the subject matter and intensity of

Andrew Graham-Dixon tells Carla Passino why he thinks we have read Vermeer wrong all along– and who the Girl with a Pearl Earring really is