“... place in a floating world informed by ‘something suggestive of Japan’. ‘However much I may admire a piece of literary work,’ he said, ‘the moment I am about to illustrate it I am seized with an instinctive loathing to the cause of my woe.’ While slogging away on Le Morte d’Arthur he gave vent to his feelings in a series of Bons Mots, small ...”

“... the High Court to accept that ‘some element of choice is … open to refugees as to where they may properly claim asylum.’ But Betts and Collier’s message was welcomed by governments of rich countries like the UK. As the Institute of Race Relations (of which I’m vice chair) reported in November, the securitisation of the Channel crossing has led ...”

“... the book’s transnationalism and intertextuality threaten to overwhelm its actual object. This may seem the right way to study Qazwini, whose work was so tightly interwoven with his time that it was often made invisible, incorporated into other works without attribution. But as an approach it sacrifices some of the texture of Wonders and Rarities: its ...”

“... a victim, and they are not.’ ‘If my only identity is that of the victim,’ she writes, ‘I may (or so it seems) commit any atrocity.’ Instead, I suggest, if we loosen our grip on suffering, discard any claim to own it, then perhaps we can ask a different question: how much pain can anyone hold in their mind at once? Must my pain always be greater ...”

“... exhaled breath into fresh air (as it was then supposed cats could do). Bizarre though they may seem, many of the legends have a kernel of lived experience, a subject touched on in many of the catalogue essays.* In Asia, Alexander did encounter animals that must have seemed monstrous to him, including monkeys that might have appeared like ‘wild ...”

“... oil wells. The government’s own net zero tsar, Chris Skidmore, has warned that climate targets may be missed because of inconsistent policies and a lack of commitment. Why does the UK have a government which is so reluctant to tackle the problems it has created, and which is so prepared to put party-political interest above national interest? All ...”

“... As Keynes himself wrote in his essay on Isaac Newton, ‘geniuses are very peculiar,’ and it may be the case that no academic account can fully recapture Keynes’s extraordinary mixture of grossness and sensitivity, intuition and logical power. A playwright might do it, as has been done for Luther, Galileo and Danton, but not the polite and inanimate ...”

“... whose work – mostly new pieces made especially for the space – is currently on view (until 31 May). Vriesendorp became friends with Jencks in the late 1960s: her then husband, Rem Koolhaas, was one of his students at the Architectural Association and in 1975 Koolhaas and Vriesendorp co-founded the architectural firm OMA. Vriesendorp’s watercolour ...”

“... the descriptions and copies of later generations. Fidia, at the Capitoline Museums in Rome until 5 May, is the first exhibition dedicated to the Athenian sculptor Phidias, celebrated in his lifetime for the statue of Zeus at Olympia but best known today for his work on the Acropolis.We know that he was born in Athens around 500 BC and was still active in the ...”

“... a meaningful escapade, inspecting the hieroglyphics of your own pop-cultural generation.‘It may seem strange to anyone who is not a graphic designer,’ Rick Poynor writes in the book accompanying the show, ‘but album cover design has never been highly regarded within the design profession. General histories of the subject never show many of ...”

“... a remark Each brisk spanked cloud that scuds A brief out from the invulnerable sun The sea in May The barking ivory spray. Just as she never succumbs to the clichés of city poetry (romantic solitude, ironic flânerie, alienated singularity), she bypasses the clichés of nature poems. What makes ‘Spring’ so enjoyable is the way she takes the ...”

“... And like him they were popular, not difficult, middlebrow not highbrow. Kipling’s short stories may initially read like puzzles: he reduced his narratives to essentials in much in the same way as Nicholson reduced detail in his woodcuts. Awkward sincerity never gets in the way of the dandy’s desire to achieve an appearance of effortlessness, to write and ...”

“... and light. In the current scene a few of the bad boys – long since turned grand old men – may be Germans (Kiefer, Richter, Baselitz), but, further back, isn’t there something displeasing about older German samplings? Something freakish, astringent, minoritarian, inturned? Say, Dürer, Dix, Liebermann and Nolde. Their canvases have a way of appearing ...”

“... she was writing. The exhibition links these works to Van Gogh with a letter written to Theo on 28 May 1888, in which he sketches a leporello he wished to make for Paul Gauguin and Émile Bernard. But there is an additional link to be made in their use of other artists as sources of both comfort and inspiration. Van Gogh would copy the work of those he admired ...”

“... On​ 23 May, the day after he called a general election, Rishi Sunak said in a radio interview that his government’s flagship Rwanda deportation scheme will only go ahead if the Tories are re-elected on 4 July. This admission came as a surprise: many had assumed that part of the rationale for calling an early election was to get a campaign boost as the flights got underway ...”