A critic with ‘an almost devout passion for good poems’

PROUST’S FAMOUS NOVEL IS CALLED IN SEARCH of Lost Time, and isn’t that the key to why we love history? It’s the urge to recover the lost past. Can we get beyond the mysterious veil to real events and

The secret meaning of Vermeer’s art

The earth-shattering collapse of the Western Roman Empire was the result of invasions, corruption and cruelty

In defence of the libretto and the librettist

Composite figment of imaginations The writer credited with composing the Iliad and the Odyssey, and often regarded as one of the most important authors of all time, is to my mind the most overrated hi