Art

Doreen  & Geoffrey Agnew relate the tale of Lawrence's Waterloo Collection, his tour of Europe, and portraits of contemporary political heavyweights

Julian Huxley traces the development of writing and language, and expounds on its meaning for humanity.

F.M. Godfrey describes the life of an important late medieval painter of royal subjects.

The English royal line has included several notable collectors of art, as Doreen Agnew here documents.

According to this Essay in Archaeological Detection by Jon Manchip White, the famous legend of the loves of Tristan and Isolt may very well rest on a solid historical basis.

Peter Quennell says Hogarth’s great survey of the Humours of an Election is one of the masterpieces of English 18th century painting

‘If ever a house radiated cheerfulness, that house is Versailles.’ Nancy Mitford on the royal palace in the middle years of Louis XV.

To an official court painter we owe the most harrowing records of the effects of revolution and war. W.R. Jeudwine discusses Goya and his times.

An 18th-century ménage à trois involving the King of Denmark inspired the recent film, A Royal Affair.  Stella Tillyard considers what makes it a story for our times.

In the summer of 1941 a collection of paintings by serving members of the London Fire Brigade  was exhibited in the United States. Anthony Kelly describes the success of a little-known propaganda campaign celebrating Britain’s ‘spirit of civilian heroism’.