After discovering an album of Victorian cartes de visite in an antiques market, Paul Frecker gave up his day job to become a dealer in vintage photographs. Now collected in a new book, these cards were “a photographic craze that seized the imagination of the British public at the beginning of the 1860s,” says the Scotland-based author. “Queen Victoria was one of the format’s biggest fans.” Initially a way of distributing family portraits to friends, the phenomenon soon extended to images of royals, celebrities and larger-than-life characters. “It really was a fervour: crowds often formed to ogle displays in stockists’ windows, to the extent that pavements were blocked and traffic was impeded.”

Before, during and after the 1998 Good Friday agreement, Gareth McConnell went around Belfast photographing the sectarian murals that characterise the city’s streetscapes. “The murals are everywhere, and they’re huge,” says the Northern Irish photographer and publisher. “For years now, taxi drivers have been taking people on tours of them.” McConnell photographed murals from both sides of the conflict, but focused on such small details that they are not identifiable. “I wanted to explore the language of form and colour,” he says. “Abstraction as a means of accessing a different kind of spiritual realm, trying to tap into a deeper, more universal understanding.”

• Details of Sectarian Murals, 1997-99 is published by Sorika ( £ 35 )

The actor on an electrifying production at the Old Vic, her favourite TV show since Succession and one of the best plates of spaghetti she’s ever had

Born in Chennai, India in 1987, Anjana Vasan grew up in Singapore before relocating to the UK to study drama. She has starred in films including Mogul Mowgli and Wicked Little Letters; her stage credits include Tanika Gupta’s production of A Doll’s House (Lyric Hammersmith, 2019) and Rebecca Frecknall’s A Streetcar Named Desire (Almeida, 2022-23), for which she won an Olivier award and an Evening Standard theatre award. Vasan has been nominated for Baftas for her TV work in Black Mirror and Nida Manzoor’s comedy We Are Lady Parts; series two returns to Channel 4 on 30 May.

The novelist on the continuing relevance of Ibsen, the joyful quilt art of Faith Ringgold and where to find British scotch eggs in New York

Born in Greenwich, Connecticut in 1966, author Claire Messud studied at Yale University and the University of Cambridge. Her first novel, 1995’s When the World Was Steady, and her book of novellas, The Hunters, were finalists for the PEN/Faulkner award; her 2006 novel The Emperor’s Children was longlisted for the Booker prize. Messud is a senior lecturer on fiction at Harvard University and has been awarded Guggenheim and Radcliffe fellowships. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her husband, literary critic James Wood; they have two children. Her latest novel, This Strange Eventful History, is published on 23 May by Fleet.