Paul Gauguin kept house with a teenage ‘wife’ in French Polynesia, islands whose culture he is often accused of ransacking for his art. @StephenSmithWDS asks if Gauguin is still worth looking at. ‘I ...

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more. Friendships between women are at the heart of much contemporary fiction, and yet they are vanishingly rare ...

All for the Thrill of the Chase - Augustus the Strong: A Study in Artistic Greatness and Political Fiasco by Tim Blanning ...

Penny for a Song - The Catchers by Xan Brooks ...

Inequality and Britain’s Next Generation by Danny Dorling; Exam Nation: Why Our Obsession with Grades Fails Everyone – and a ...

The most enigmatic and in some ways the most tragic victim of this process was Richard II. He is the central figure in Helen ...

The good news is that we’re all doomed. Humankind has made such a hash of the stewardship of creation that God looks like a chump for entrusting it to us. Most of the biosphere would be better off ...

How does an Oxford academic follow up a prize-winning trade book, a newly researched biography of Geoffrey Chaucer? And, moreover, in lockdown, when archives and libraries are largely inaccessible?

It’s not a bad life for the leaders of the British bourgeoisie! There’s plenty for them to protect in their capitalist system ...

The new Duke of Buckingham now outranked every other nobleman in England. Moreover, his seemingly unassailable place in the ...

Nicholas Shakespeare’s first novel since 2010 is a literary thriller set in a damp, wintry Oxford. The book’s protagonist will be familiar to Shakespeare’s regular readers: John Dyer appeared in his ...

It is hard to think of a person more qualified to write this book. In addition to being an art historian, a prolific writer, a lecturer and a broadcaster, James Stourton is also a former chairman of ...