Secrets of the Buddha

In 1996 construction workers in China unearthed a burial pit containing 400 statues of Buddha. Had they been thrown away? Hidden? As they arrive in Britain, Sarah Wise reports on an extraordinary 12th-century treasure

Tea and empathy

John Cunningham visits Batley Public Library, where 'bibliotherapy' is helping to tackle health problems.

‘Shakespeare’s house’ located

Remains of a timber framed house which Shakespeare may have built, and lived in with other actors from his company, have been found within a stone's throw of the site of his Globe theatre.

Reich and ruin

Beevor's Berlin is as compelling and extraordinary as his Stalingrad.

That’s no lady, that’s…

... the earliest known portrait of the third Earl of Southampton, Shakespeare's patron and possible lover. Its dramatic discovery will ignite a new debate about the playwright's sexuality.

The man who would be king

Norman Foster is the original superstar architect, building everything, everywhere, all the time. But as he nears 70, the critics are gathering and his legacy seems far from assured. By Steve Rose

The egalitarian instinct

The British anti-slavery movement was grounded in the belief that colonial subjects could be 'civilised' by Christianity. But, writes Catherine Hall , this vision gave way to a harsher view of race

Tighten your belts

Penny-pincher or saint? Ben Pimlott assesses Stafford Cripps in The Cripps Version by Peter Clarke

It’s a small world

Art students are discovering their inner child on the UK's first - and only - degree course for kid's book illustrators. Jerome Monahan gets the picture.

Sweet airs that delight

In his role as a teacher, Seamus Heaney has enjoyed watching poetry work its spell on all sorts of listeners, from tough Belfast schoolboys to beady Harvard scholars

Saxon or Norman?

Tories are beginning to make One Nation speeches again. Tristram Hunt looks at the cultural history of Disraeli's idea and discovers it's all about race, not class