The first time I understood Art History to be a subject, rather than something you did at the weekends with your parents, was at my sixth-form open day aged sixteen. I had chosen my other A-Level subjects, but chanced across a classroom at the end of the school filled with pictures of paintings and stacks of colourful books. I could recognise some of them – Rubens, Gainsborough, postcards of cathedrals, Mondrian. All the students were smiling and saying how much they had enjo

Image courtesy of SHOOT FROM THE HIP! There is no better remedy to a long day of work, stress, library procrastination or winter blues than a great comedy show. Well actually, we found something better for you: it is called ‘the Shoot from the Hip’, i.e. a totally free and hilarious improvised show on Drury Lane, two minutes away from your Somerset winter palace! Every Tuesday night at top secret comedy club, the brilliant Luke Manning, Tom Mayo, Sam Russell and Paul G Raymon

Film Review: MARGY KINMONTH’s ‘Revolution: New Art for a New World’ Kustodiev – Demonstration in Uritsky Square (image courtesy of Arts Alliance/ Foxtrot Films, www.foxtrotfilms.com) The world seems to be doing a stock-check on Russia. Pussy Riot’s notoriety in the Guardian (2012), then, the elegant Svetlana Alexievich’s ‘Second-Hand Time’ (2013). On awarding her the Nobel prize, the Swedish Academy praised the Belarusian writer’s work as a ‘monument to suffering in our time’