Jo, Meg, Amy, Beth, Marmee ... sure the March women are equal in literary fame and stature to the great heroines of Jane Austen or George...

Little Women, dir. Greta Gerwig, 2019 If ever we needed film to supply a much-needed tonic for our caustic, worrisome times, Greta...

Pan's Labyrinth, dir. Guillermo del Toro, 2006 I saw this on a restored 35mm print: what a revelation. The depth of colours, the rich...

Oil on canvas, c. 1610, by Orazio Gentileschi, (1563 – 1639) For the week of Christmas, a scene of the nativity. This is one of several...

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, dir. Quentin Tarantino, 2019 To watch this new movie is to witness Tarantino not as we’ve come to expect -...

Oil on canvas, 1869, by Jean Frederic Bazille (1841 - 1870) I was drawn to this painting primarily because it vividly echoes one of the...

Microetching on photographic paper, 2007, by Jean Livet, Ryan Draft and Jeff Lichtman Coming across this lithograph, one immediately...

Oil on canvas, 1901, by Pablo Picasso (1881 – 1973) Of the several Picassos hung in the same space, Mother and Child is by far the most...

The Spell, by Allan Hollinghurst, Chatto & Windus, 1998 What is remarkable about Hollinghurst's fiction is what is usually not remarkable...

Oil on canvas, 1897, by George Cope (1855 – 1929) There is something immediately very disarming about Hanging Woodcock which also invites...

Greener Grass, dir. Jocelyn DeBeer, Dawn Luebbe, 2019 Set in the syrupy world of soccer moms, everyone in this turgid town wears braces...

Oil on canvas, 1903 by John Singer Sargent (1856 – 1925) Higginson is described by the curator as being a Civil War Veteran and a banker,...

Open Book – A Literary Postcard by Ian Holding, broadcast on BBC Radio 4, May 2018 For a bibliophile, living in a country like Zimbabwe...