Martha Barratt

In​ 1986, the art historian Lawrence Gowing wrote to Carolee Schneemann with a proposal. He would write a ‘substantial’ book on her work, but warned her that ‘I shall break your back with the weight of the devotion and the determination that I am unloading on you … You will have to hold my fanaticism down and teach it obedience.’ This would be the first...

At the start​ of the First World War, 12-year-old Tom Harris moved with his family to a semi-derelict mansion on the outskirts of Leicester. Struggling at school and with few friends, he built a world for himself from its garden, a museum of pressed plants and tree samples. He established a fernery – complete with grotto – and spent evenings ‘skeletonising’ dead...