It’s often easy to base artistic judgements against an illusory parallel with technological progress, so that modernist experimentation became the artistic standard par excellence of the twentieth century. Today we might well regard more atypical figures like Grossman or Shostakovich as being of equal or better merit to Schoenberg or Joyce. Similarly, the fact that the Pre-Raphaelites had reverted to a medievalistic conception of art as impressionism dawned in Europe or that Austen’s novels were all written against the backdrop of early romanticism seems largely inconsequential. It was difficult not to think of things like this as I went round the National Gallery’s exhibition of Spanish art. As with its earlier exhibition on Siennese art, the gallery seems keen to revive interest in minority subjects and this is a particularly acute example.

While medieval art routinely carved wooden sculptures for churches, the renaissance and reformation saw a trend towards carving statues from stone, leaving them unpainted in pure white, out of a mistaken notion that the Greeks and Romans had not painted their statues. In Spain though, the tradition of painting wooden sculpture continued unabated alongside increasingly realistic techniques of portrait painting. Paintings from the likes of Velasquez and Zurbaran deploy the same methods as Caravaggio and Veronese but retain all the hallmarks of artifice. Both painters add captions, writing and legends to their painters to destroy the impression of verisimilitude. Zurbaran tends to pose his things in stark white light against a dark black backdrop, as if the painting was a stage set. The sculptures seem eerily lifelike in comparison to Canova or Thorvaldsen, with eyelashes made out of hair, teeth from ivory and real clothing stiffened with glue used alongside glass eyes and tears. The sculptures would have had their clothing changed and be taken out for ceremonial processions; they were not simply static objects in galleries or museums. The rich detailing is often wonderful; the Virgin Mary by Montanes is a blaze of polychromatic colour. Equally though, the gory horror of some of the sculptures is frequently appalling; the severed neck of John the Baptist is rendered in anatomically correct detail while countless Christs are depicted in bathed in blood, their bodies pierced and lacerated. The images seen in glass cases below the altar in Catholic churches take centre stage here, like something from a casualty ward. Zurbaran’s painting of St Serapion, who appears to be simply asleep comes as a relief from the horror. I leaving not doubting the artistic merit of the works but feeling glad their have been consigned as a historical relic and a matter of obscurity.

The logic behind the Royal Academy’s exhibition on Epstein, Gaudier-Brzeska and Gill is presumably that of artistic parallels between three contemporaries, but it is somewhat difficult to leave the exhibition convinced that the three have a great deal in common. Gill and Epstein shared a notion of ‘direct carving’ but Gill’s work seems more difficult to place, better connected to Blake and Palmer than Brancusi or Duchamp. The sexual politics of his work seem especially difficult to fathom; Ecstasy must have been one of the explicit paeans to sexual pleasure for thousands of years in Europe, but it sits alongside several Madonnas and Child. His religion and sexuality seem to combine in various odd ways; a shrivelled Christ on the cross was paired with a Earth mother figure that recalls his fecund Madonnas. Male submissiveness is frequently counterpointed to female dominance; he seems to have been less a Catholic and more a Mariolater. Something of the same sensibility certainly seem to apply to Epstein as well, but Rock Drill with its emphasis on aggressive male masculinity is quite unlike Gill, not to mention its adoption of readymades. Equally, his sculpture of Venus recalls the influence of African and North American art. Nonetheless, it’s Gaudier-Brzeska that seems the more mainstream figure of the period (albeit perhaps a rather less interesting one), with the increasingly abstract nature of his sculpture and the influence of Vorticism, as well as the same African and North American influences.

Before leaving London, I visit the Barbican’s conservatory. It’s an odd place, a small jungle rising above the concrete walkways and towers, not least because the Barbican’s concrete labyrinth applies every bit as much to the interior of the conservatory. With the concrete decayed under dripping water it looks like nothing so much as an enactment of Ballard’s Drowned World. Bromeliads and Bougainvillea are in flower while Zebra finches sing in the aviary and alarmingly large carp splash in the pools.

Reading Zola’s The Masterpiece is perhaps the reflexive of his novels, given the presence of himself and his circle of friends as characters. On the one hand, Sandoz proclaims that "this is the idea: to study man as he really is. Not this metaphysical marionette they’ve made us believe he is but the physiological human being determined by his surroundings" only to then undermine it with a lyrical hymn to the earth. The novel essentially proceeds as a critique of romanticism, as with Claude’s tendency to undermine the naturalism of his paintings; "the old streak of romanticism.. the generation we belong to was brought up on romanticism, it soaked into us and we can do nothing about it." Equally though, the novel critiques the idea of a scientific basis for art itself, as with Claude’s mistaken scientific theory of colours; "with characteristic over-indulgence he began to exaggerate the scientific theory of colours.. that way, it was obvious, madness lay.".

Travelling up to Staffordshire, I stop first at Dorchester and Chiselhampton. In the latter, I visit St Birinus, with a wonderful painted ceiling and rood screen as well as the Abbey. I also detour to Warwick in order to see St Mary’s church. I’d been here before but on a rather rushed trip, so it’s nice to be able to take time to look at the details; the bears and griffins that serve as the tomb statue footrests in the Beauchamp chapel, the doom painting or the gold weepers.

Arriving up north, the following day is taken up with visiting Birmingham. Once more, it occurs to me that this must once have been one of the most astonishing places on earth, to the nineteenth century as New York was to the present and Shanghai will be to this. The redbrick Venetian arches and Minton tiles on ordinary shops and houses are far more elaborate than anything in nineteenth century London. Inevitably, the modern reality is rather more prosaic with the inevitable rash of closed shops on the high streets, although the presence of various skyscrapers does remind me rather more of London than any other provincial city I’ve visited. There are quite a few things that I’ve not seen before; the interior of the former Midlands Bank (now a bookshop) is wonderful with its blue skylight and elaborate staircases. The Georgian buildings in St Paul’s Square afford a view of a Birmingham I was largely unfamiliar with, save for St Philip’s cathedral. The church of Saint Paul at the centre of the square has a marvellous painted window, one of the few I’ve seen (Kidlington, Shrewsbury and Witley Court being the other places). A walk through the Jewellery Quarter leads to the blue brick entrance to the Warstone Lane cemetery. The tombs are neatly maintained and the grass cut, in contrast to the wild and overgrown cemeteries in London, although the extent of vandalism seems severe. I notice several tombs that seem to be mass burials, while the blackening of the stones from pollution is also decidedly different to London. The same applies to the catacombs cut from the rock across the hilly territory. I walk onward to the adjoining Keyhill cemetery, where the tombs are more elaborate. While hardly as elaborate as London, the tombs are still very ornate here with the usual gothic spires and Roman urns accompanied by images of held hands and lilies. I finish at the church of St Martins, revisiting its alabaster tombs and William Morris stained glass. For the modern period, Paul Maxfield’s bizarre trompe l’oeil murals in the Piccadilly Arcade are an odd addition to the city.

The final day in the Midlands is taken up with a walk in the Memorial Arboretum. The tree planting has come along quite markedly, with Celery Trees, Pecan tress and Japanese Cherry tree among the new applies. The Crab apples are fruiting. There are several new memorials; a Polish memorial and a RAF memorial in particular. I’m bemused to find a horse from a funfair carousel in the middle of the arboretum wood. Covered in butterflies and cobwebs, it’s like a scene from Narnia. The more prosaic truth is that it’s a memorial from the Guild of Showmen.

William Cobbett is often compared to Orwell and the controversies as to whether the latter counts as left or wing also apply to Cobbett. On the one hand, much of Rural Rides is concerned with rural poverty, rotten boroughs and unjustly authoritarian legislation. On the other, Cobbett’s vision is one founded on a romantic conception of man’s relation to the land and from that stems a quasi-feudalistic idea of politics. He values manual labour and has an atavistic aversion to anything outside that, hence repeated tirades against ‘Jews and stock jobbers’ (and oddly against Quakers) as well as his insistence that the population is declining when that was only true of the rural population. He disdains services and praises the King of Spain for banning them. He seems unconcerned with many vital causes of the time, stating that slaves had better conditions than English labourers. While having decried Pitt’s war against the ‘French people’s liberties’ he calls for war against the Bourbons. In some ways, he has as much in common with the far right as with the left. Nonetheless, from Cobbett, comes the stream of politics associated with Ebeneezer Howard, Pugin (Cobbett seems to dislike Dissenters and repeatedly praises Catholics) and William Morris, but Owen is a rather more representative figure of modern leftwing thought.

Reading The Jewish War by Josephus offers a counterpoint to two sets of more familiar narratives. Firstly that of the Bible; where Josephus mentions aspects of the Old Testament such as the city of Sodom, Christianity is not deemed worthy of discussion. Secondly, that of Roman history with one of the few examples of colonial subjects writing back. As both a General who had resisted the Romans and a collaborator, Josephus has a decidedly ambivalent perspective on events. On the one hand, he denounces Jews who had leagued themselves with the Syrians against their fellow Jews, just as Josephus had done ("small wonder we have found foreigners treacherous when we have utterly betrayed our own nation"). He also records the mass suicide of one group of Jewish rebels rather than live as slaves. On the other, religious fatalism is used to suggest submission; "God.. is ranged on the Roman side, for without his help so vast an empire could never have been built up." Arguments in favour of Roman rule build on their respect for the Jewish temple, only for the text to repeatedly record acts of desecration. In part, Josephus seems to admire the Romans, repeatedly contrasting Roman discipline (give or take the occasional coup d’etat) with Jewish civil war and disunity ("wasn’t it civil strife amongst our ancestors… put beneath the Roman heel those who did not deserve to be free"); Jewish military training is modelled on the Romans.