Why watercolours deserve their revival in popularityWhen the National Gallery ran its eye-tracking experiment last year into how we look at pictures, the works selected for the test were all oil paintings. Had they been watercolours, the results might have been quite different. Going round the Girtin show at Tate Britain recently, I noticed that people look at watercolours differently. Without the National Gallery's sophisticated surveillance equipment, I'm not in a position to comment on their eye movements, but I can report that they look harder and closer, as if their interest is not just in a picture's subject, but in how it's made.

John Laughland reports from Iraq on the determination of ordinary people to fight any attempt by the British and Americans to impose regime changeMosul, northern Iraq The ancient city of Mosul straddles the Tigris near the Turkish and Syrian borders, and just beneath the hills of Kurdistan. Churches and mosques jostle for space in its tiny biblical alleyways; Kurds, Arabs, Armenians, Syrians, Turkmen, Jews and Yezidis all call it home.