The smell of the greasepaint, the roar of the crowd, the flare of the floodlights – what enchantments they conjure! If you’d visited a regional playhouse over two centuries ago, though, a very differe

Middleland: Dispatches from the Borders Rory Stewart (Jonathan ...

Over a long career, John Hardman has specialised to great effect in teasing out, from speeches, decrees, minutes, memoranda, letters, diaries and unsent drafts, the varied moods of French political de

King Henry VIII and the Barber Surgeons

Capturing the immediacy of fighting and the writhing bodies of soldiers, as well as keeping narrative clarity, proved enormously difficult for painters depicting battles before the advent of photography. Michael Hall reveals how they rose to the challenge

Dramatic shade and texture bring Thomas Bewick’s blackbird ...