True portrait of a singular woman

Best books… Roy Foster The emeritus professor of ...

ince they were written almost a century ago, John Cowper Powys’s novels have lost none of their ability to amaze, inspire, horrify, perplex, and at times, disappoint. Although he liked to identify as

LS Lowry is arguably England’s greatest artist. He painted a subject area that no one had ever painted before, the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution, and became popular with the general public to

“Johannes Vermeer is the most laconic of the Dutch old masters,” Andrew Graham-Dixon once remarked, adding that this “may explain why he has been the cause of so much volubility in others”. A quarter

Tom Stoppard Indian InkHampstead Theatre, until February 7 History can turn on a style of painting. Paintings can also be emissaries from one age to the next, clues in the puzzle of life, endlessly in

Alice Loxton EleanorA 200-mile walk in search of England’slost queen352pp. Pan Macmillan. £22. Many are commemorated in stone, but few so grandly as Eleanor of Castile (d. 1290). Following her unexpec