Vandals come in all shapes and sizes, and their targets and their reasons can be hard to fathom... Last year, when reading about Art Under Attack - a Tate Britain exhibition of pieces that have been deliberately damaged over the years by iconoclasts of one kind and another - I was startled ... Read More...

Bookseller Steerforth handles a great many old books in his line of work. Often he'll find old photos and albums amongst the piles of mildewed tomes: snapshots of lost worlds and forgotten lives. Continuing the series in which he shares some of the more interesting discoveries, here are more of the incredible ... Read More...

Continuing our 10-part weekly serialisation of Jonathan Law's The Whartons of Winchendon... As we saw last week, Goodwin Wharton was able to communicate with the fairies. But that was merely a warm-up, as before long he was receiving messages direct from God, with bizarre consequences... It was in the October of 1684 ... Read More...

It has long been believed that Ernest Shackleton's glimpses of an 'extra man' on his Antarctic expedition were exhausted hallucinations. But Frank has discovered important new evidence showing that he may have been right all along... Who is the third who always walks beside you? When I count, there are only you ... Read More...

Ever wondered why Americans have an enormous family turkey dinner just before having to do it all over again a few weeks later? Author and historian Peter Firstbrook explains Thanksgiving for a British audience, including why it's so close to Christmas... Today, millions of families throughout the United States will sit down ... Read More...

If you thought The Hellfire Duke was something else, wait until you meet his uncle Goodwin - as we continue our weekly serialisation of Jonathan Law's The Whartons of Winchendon... Rismin! Accoron! Osmindor! Rumbonium! High summer in deepest Bucks – and something very strange is stirring in the woods. The woman stalks slowly ... Read More...

Bookseller Steerforth handles a great many old books in his line of work. Often he'll find old photos and albums amongst the piles of mildewed tomes: snapshots of lost worlds and forgotten lives. Continuing the series in which he shares some of the more interesting, surprising and moving discoveries, he finds some ... Read More...

Continuing our weekly serialisation of Jonathan Law's The Whartons of Winchendon, we meet Philip Wharton, son of Thomas. His pious grandfather had been known as 'The Good Lord', but Philip, founder of 'the Hellfire Club' (devoted to drinking, lewdness, and puerile acts of blasphemy), was a somewhat different character... May it please ... Read More...

My work done, I toddled the length of Bermondsey Street peering critically into windows. Here was a teensy art gallery selling coffee; next door, in stark contrast, was a teensy coffee shop selling art. A barrel-chested man in ironic clothes with an improbably small dog was being rude to the baristas. ... Read More...

Continuing our weekly serialisation of Jonathan Law's The Whartons of Winchendon, the story of Thomas Wharton takes a turn for the darker and stranger... Although Tom Wharton spent his last years in the incongruous role of a much honoured elder statesman, he would be outlived by one last, semi-mysterious scandal – a ... Read More...