“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

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

Collecting fields often have holy grails, and in medieval illuminated manuscripts one is the Roman d’Alexandre or Romance of Alexander. The 20cm-tall book, written in Old French and illustrated with 1

Catapult Opera; Talea Ensemble/Neal Goren Pentatone PTC5187492 99:63 mins The history of Nadia Boulanger’s only full-length opera is a tortuous as Gabriele D’Annunzio’s libretto, in which Alexandre an

Verdi’s dramatic operas are among the most popular, but grief nearly halted his output and the Italian composer and countryman only returned to creativity after finding solace on his farm, reports Henrietta Bredin

ny potential reader of A Glastonbury Romance is likely to be put off initially by its sheer size: this brick of a book runs to more than 1,100 pages, containing almost half a million words. Some autho