Catherine Clarke A History of England in 25 Poems400pp. Allen Lane. £25. Mark Forsyth Rhyme and ReasonA short history of poetry and people (forpeople who don’t usually read poetry)368pp. Allen & Unwin

Tom Stoppard Indian InkHampstead Theatre, until February 7 History can turn on a style of painting. Paintings can also be emissaries from one age to the next, clues in the puzzle of life, endlessly in

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

You wouldn’t guess from the cover design—three songbirds silhouetted over swatches of picturesque Englishness—but Catherine Clarke’s A History of England in 25 Poems hits one of its sweet spots with a

Valerie Eliot and John Haffenden, editors The Letters of T. S. EliotVolume 10: 1942–19441,136pp. Faber. £60. During the Second World War, Shamley Wood House in Surrey was a place of refuge for T. S. E

The author Alex Preston spent his childhood dreaming of Greece, but it wasn’t until he visited Corfu that he found what he was looking for – along with the inspiration for his latest novel