ILLUSTRATION BY PAUL COX Going full Celt VOICING ...

Had Robin Holloway published Music’s Odyssey—described by its author as “an invitation to the glorious long voyage of Western classical music”—30 years ago, he might well have got away with it. By day

So Vincent van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo in October 1876, charting the latest instalment of the Holbein cult. He was renting a room in Isleworth, west London, still hoping for a religious career

Using an 18th-century wood engraving technique developed for book illustration, Richard Studer enjoys storytelling through his prints

The acquisition of houses by the National Trust from the 1930s had less to do with the impoverishment of aristocratic families than the industrial wealth of bachelor donors, as Michael Hall reveals

Michael D. C. Drout The Tower and the Ruin J. R. R. Tolkien’s creation 384pp. Norton. £25. Giuseppe Pezzini Tolkien and the Mystery of Literary Creation 456pp. Cambridge University Press. £30. Michael