Sibyls , the book born of Ruth Fainlight’s poems and Leonard Baskin’s prints, became a memento of friendship, beauty and sorrow for its author

Melanie McDonagh Converts From Oscar Wilde to Muriel Spark, why so many became Catholic in the 20th century 368pp. Yale University Press. £25 (US $38). Nobody likes a convert. For believers, the word

It’s a sunny summer afternoon in a verdant corner of the Essex countryside. A pretty pastoral landscape lies before us, with cattle sheltering in the shade of oak trees, rolling green fields, and a gr

Exhibition of the week Lucian Freud: Drawing into ...

“And there are other things even worthier of conservation.” Having devoured At Home (1958), the autobiography of the novelist William Plomer, E. M. Forster wrote to his friend Plomer to tell him the e

I’LL return in two hours, Mr Archer.” Lister, Lord Despard’s steward, touched his forelock in deference to the young architect. The sun had just risen over the woods surrounding the lake – where a fol