“This tremendous aggregate of a book has many of the characteristics of a Festschrift assembled to honour some Great Influencer”: so, in 1973, the architectural historian Priscilla Metcalf began the f

Melanie McDonagh Converts From Oscar Wilde to Muriel Spark, why so many became Catholic in the 20th century 368pp. Yale University Press. £25 (US $38). Nobody likes a convert. For believers, the word

“As movers and the moved both know”, John Updike noted, “books are heavy freight ... They make us think twice about changing addresses.” Books: A manifesto, or, How to build a library begins with the

In Caravaggio’s “St Matthew and the Angel” (1602), the Bible seems to arrive as a shock to those who wrote it. Matthew, bare-armed and dirty-toed, is a fisherman stranded on dry land. Everything about

The beauty of Lancashire’s Lune valley emerges from ...

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