Kathryn Hughes is Professor of Life Writing at the University of East Anglia and a literary critic for the Guardian. Her most recent book is Victorians Undone (4th Estate).

Features
Florence Nightingale photographed by Millbourn in c. 1890. Wellcome Collection, London (CC BY 4.0)

How Victorian artists saw Florence Nightingale

The bicentenary of the founder of modern nursing has a particularly topical resonance, but how did her contemporaries regard the Lady with the Lamp?

4 May 2020

Current Issue

December 2020

In the news

The headquarters of the Royal College of Physicians in Regent’s Park.

The Royal College of Physicians’ plan to sell its rare books would be a serious medical error

A proposal to sell off ‘non-medical’ books in the institution’s library takes too narrow a view of the history of medicine

The Virgin and Child with the Infant St John , known as the Taddei Tondo (c. 1504–05), Michelangelo Buonarroti. Royal Academy of Arts, London.

‘Setting people against objects makes for a grim discussion’

Museums face difficult financial choices, but there has to be a better way forward than the pitting of staff against permanent collections

Most popular

  • google_a
  • Recent

Podcast

The Apollo 40 under 40 podcast: Mohamad Hafez

The Syrian-born, US-based artist talks to Gabrielle Schwarz about his sculptural dioramas of cities ravaged by war – and offers a message of hope for the future

Art news daily

The week in art news – continuing restrictions mean a patchy reopening for European museums

The week in art news – Smithsonian and other US museums close amid Covid surge

The week in art news – controversial road tunnel near Stonehenge gets the go-ahead

Latest Comment

Are the Old Masters more indispensable than ever?

Literary heroes are big business in Dublin – so why won’t the city protect its Joyce heritage?

‘That hyena in petticoats’: how artists have portrayed Mary Wollstonecraft