The news is that two 1772 paintings by Stubbs – The Kongourou from New Holland and The Dingo – are to be sold from the collection at Parham Park, Sussex. If the export of these important works is to be prevented – not surprisingly A [...]

Today, 13 January, is the 72nd anniversary of the death of James Joyce in Zurich, when he failed to recover from an operation for a perforated ulcer.  He died twenty days short of  his 59th birthday.   This was wartime, and James and Nora Joyce had [...]

18th century gentlemen, professionals and merchants subscribed in large numbers to a monthly publication that claimed (according to the Preface to its volume for 1742) to be "highest in the Esteem of the Learned, Inquisitive and Judicious" in providi [...]

In the new Cragg and Fidelis novel Dark Waters, which is published tomorrow, 2 August, an intriguing little volume called Penkethman’s Jests has a moment of its own. Titus Cragg, always interested in a book, notices it at the bedside of the Iri [...]

Art crime in fact and fiction(Originally written in August 2011. Unpublished.) Dr No, the first James Bond film made in 1962, features a bravura piece of set-dressing. Penetrating the arch-criminal’s headquarters, 007 walks by an easel displaying Go [...]

 upon its publication by Minotaur in America.   From the outset A Dark Anatomy was framed as a detective mystery with two fundamental elements: the location to be Preston, in the north-west of England, where I was born; the time to be abo [...]

Towards the end of 2009 the UK government (then New Labour) published a consultation paper about the future of libraries. It contained some alarming proposals for privatising or voluntarising the library service, while watering down the legal obligat [...]

If you want to know the mid-18th century’s state of knowledge on almost any topic it’s a good idea go to their version of Wikipedia, the French Encyclopédie edited by Denis Diderot and Jean D’Alembert, which was first published in 1754. A cooperative [...]

Over the last week I’ve been writing about Leonardo da Vinci, ahead of the exhibition opening at the National Gallery in London on 9 November. Like everyone who gets interested in Leonardo, I’ve been puzzling over him, and wondering in pa [...]

On the amazon website a reader named “foxsford” has posted a single-starred review of A Dark Anatomy. Here it is in full :  “A better title for A dark anatomy would be A pale reflection. The writing is facile and thin; just [...]