Rachel Willie

Matthew Prior’s diplomatic negotiations with France in the period 1711–15 were the most important and worst rewarded of his career. From 1711 the English career-diplomat and poet acted as secret negotiator for the Tory government with enemy France. His journeys and talks were part of wider negotiations that ultimately led to peace and the Treaty

A few months ago, I attended a symposium organized by my old friend Peter Miller, now Dean of the Bard Graduate Center in New York. It celebrated 20 years of that institution’s innovative programme on the history of decorative arts and material culture. The speakers included academics from various fields and curators from museums on

‘The Culture of Early Modern Sussex’, a HEIF-funded project, intends to challenge assumptions about the county, demonstrating both the strangeness of Sussex and its importance in the period 1500 – 1700.  Through a series of public events in the Spring and early Summer of 2015 – including two exhibitions, a number of public lectures, and

Extraordinarily, despite his ongoing popularity (tesitified by the amount of his work in the National Gallery’s own collection), there has never yet been a monographic show on Paolo Veronese in England. This is a striking omission that has been handsomely corrected in the National Gallery Exhibition, which ran from 19 March until 15 June 2014.

When I was invited to a Christmas party last year, I was requested to “dress smartly and don’t bring any cider!”. Yet, even without this warning, good manners  would have dictated that I leave the four-pack of Scrumpy Jack at the back of my fridge. For me, however, the incident also posed the question: why