Travel: Retreat From The World

For his new book, Nat Segnit visited Britain’s quietest monasteries and islands to talk to monks, hermits and recluses

What is... a nail house?

Don’t confuse a nail house with a nail parlour. A nail house is an old house that survives as new building development goes on all around it.

Kent's stairway to heaven

Walter Barton May’s Hadlow Castle is the ultimate Gothic folly

Pursuits

Pursuits

The book that changed the world

On Marcel Proust’s 150th anniversary, A N Wilson praises his masterpiece, an exquisite comedy with no parallel

RIP the playboys of the western world

Charlie Methven mourns his dashing former father-in-law, Luis ‘the Bounder’ Basualdo, last of a dying breed

Arts

Arts

My film family's greatest hits

Downton Abbey producer Gareth Neame follows in the footsteps of his father, grandfather and great-grandmother, a silent-movie star

Books

Books

A lifetime of pin-ups

Barry Humphries still has nightmares about going on stage. He’s always admired the stars who kept battling on

Travel: Exmoor Ecstasy

In lockdown, Londoner Ivo Dawnay moved to Somerset’s coombes and moors. Now he never wants to leave this Garden of Eden

Virginia McKenna, the African queen

At 90, the actress is still saving the wildlife she fell in love with, filming Born Free, over 50 years ago. By Roderick Gilchrist

Renaissance miracles

For over 300 years, Italian painters produced the finest altarpieces in the world, says David Ekserdjian

Thank heaven for Leslie Caron

She starred in Gigi, danced with Fred Astaire and acted opposite Cary Grant. Hugo Vickers meets the great actress as she turns 90

Dearest Diana

Christopher Balfour fondly recalls a hilarious trip to New York with the princess, who would have been 60 on 1st July

Sex-mad DH Lawrence

His amoral wife made the jealous writer think sex was a tragedy. By Frances Wilson

Overlooked Britain: A philanthropist's palace

Heroic American steel tycoon Andrew Carnegie paid for 3,000 libraries and built glorious Skibo Castle in his native Scotland

I was a teenage Marxist

Bruce Anderson was bewitched by Marxism – until he saw the IRA at work in Northern Ireland

Churchill's mommie dearest

History hasn’t been kind to Jennie Churchill, who died 100 years ago. But the New Yorker was her son’s greatest influence. By Anne Sebba

How Mr Tickle Tickled The World

Fifty years after they began, Mr Men books have sold 85 million copies. Teacher Kath Garner pays tribute to the brilliant adman behind them

The best sermons ever

This Easter, vicars shouldn’t be obscure or arrogant in the pulpit. Like Jesus, they should be funny, says Reverend Peter Mullen

When the Hurricane hit Liverpool

Alex Higgins smoked, boozed and gambled as he met a delighted Gary Smith

Gainsborough in London

The Suffolk painter is best known for his rural scenes – but his last years in the capital were the pinnacle of his career

Suffering for her art

Tortured by love, longing for children, Elizabeth Bowen poured her pain into her exceptional novels, says her friend A N Wilson

The gripes of Roth

As a new biography appears, director Tristram Powell remembers working with a writer who could be kind – and scarily cruel

Gyles Brandreth's Diary: Appointment with death

After 30 years of double vision and headaches, I finally visited a neurologist and learnt the truth...

Wizards from Oz

A wave of brilliant Australians came to Britain sixty years ago. They included Clive James, Germaine Greer – and Barry Humphries

Pilgrimage to 84 Charing Cross Road

A New Yorker’s letters to a London bookshop were a big hit 50 years ago. Valerie Grove accompanied her on her first visit to Marks & Co

Chips with extra sauce

Chips Channon was the ideal political diarist – truthful, vulnerable and gossipy.

Gregory Gregory's Stately Pleasure Home

Harlaxton Manor has been home to a millionaire Victorian recluse, a face-cream tycoon and an American university