LITERARY REVIEW : The latest issue features Jeremy Noel-Tod on Seamus Heaney * Kathryn Murphy on Vermeer * Kirsten Tambling on two 18th-century artists * Sophie Oliver on Katherine Mansfield * Lucy Lethbridge on reading * Tom Shippey on the first king of England * Daniel Rey on Christopher Columbus * Nigel Jones on U-boats * Richard Vinen on the Second World War * John Phipps on John le Carré * Julian Baggini on effective altruism 

The Pen & the Spade

The Poems of Seamus Heaney By Rosie Lavan, Bernard O’Donoghue and Matthew Hollis (edd.)

Vermeer: A Life Lost and Found By Andrew Graham-Dixon

A woman stands, oblivious to our gaze, absorbed entirely in her activity – reading, pouring, weighing, holding out her pearls. A window to the left admits a radiance, which falls variously on the common stuff the room contains. The light enters as an absolute blank, but infuses colour as it illuminates the scene. 

Katherine Mansfield: A Hidden Life By Gerri Kimber

The rush to tell the story of Katherine Mansfield’s short, fascinating life began as soon as she died. Her husband, John Middleton Murry, a gifted editor, notoriously turned the publication of her writing into an industry.