The secret meaning of Vermeer’s art

Danny Bird You open your book by recounting a chance visit to an old mosque in Cyprus. What was so significant about that moment? Tharik Hussain Nothing changed for me on the day itself, because I kne

The rise and fall of an undervalued institution

John Marlowe, a shoemaker from Canterbury, died in 1605. His son Christopher had failed to follow him into the trade, choosing the more unreliable life of playwright, poet and jobbing spy. It had been

The poor citizens of Al-Jazira al-Khadra never knew what hit them. In 859, an unfamiliar fleet sailed into the bay separating this Muslim settlement – which later evolved into the city of Algeciras, n

The last time Merlin Holland came to this particular address on Tite Street in London, a previous home of his late grandfather Oscar Wilde, was in 1954, at the age of nine, for the unveiling of a blue