IN 1676, London publishers Thomas Bassett and Richard Chiswell had a success on their hands. Half a century after first publication, they reissued in a single volume two atlases by John Speed: The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine of 1612 and A Prospect of the Most Famous Parts of the World (1627). Speed’s maps were of surpassing beauty, ornamented with decorative strapwork and flowing calligraphy by Dutch engraver Jodocus Hondius, their broad margins featuring medallion-shaped, bird’s-eye views of large and small towns, from Edinburgh to Radnor, or images of key buildings, including palaces and cathedrals, coats of arms of noblemen and university colleges and distinctive, flattened-perspective town plans. In his foreword, Speed had been at pains to assure his readers of the thoroughness of his research, so extensive, he claimed, that he had had ‘small regard to the bewitching pleasures and vain enticements of this wicked world’. His readers were convinced. Speed’s Theatre would remain in print until the final quarter of the 18th century and, on his death in 1629, Speed’s success as a cartographer accounted for healthy bequests to all of his 18 children who survived him.
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Save our family farms
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A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
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We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
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Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
