Rider Haggard after hours spent digging on Bradenham Heath in Norfolk searching for the gibbet cage in which the body of the ...

Who is the most overderrated person in history? Henry VIII. Nasty piece of work and not as clever as he thought he was.’ ...

The legacy of a decade of British weapons testing in its vast central deserts has forced Australia into an uncomfortable ...

Capitalism: A Global History by Sven Beckert looks beyond the cities to the coffee and cotton that fuelled a global market.

In 1776 the Founding Father John Adams stated that future commemorations of the United States’ independence ‘ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, ...

Ancient Egyptian monuments are covered in graffiti made by visitors from Cyprus. Why were they there, and what does it mean? In antiquity carving one’s name on a monument was a common and culturally ...

In May 1876 the diarist Francis Kilvert was visiting Oxford. Enjoying a peaceful sunny day in a quiet college garden, he suddenly heard a disturbance: ‘the voices and laughter and trampling of a ...

The idea that a battle might alter the course of history, though first popularised in the 19th century, is not without foundation. For as one writer remarked a generation after 1066, ‘French customs ...

Environmental history is a comparatively young field of enquiry with strong American roots. Roderick Nash, emeritus historian at the University of California, is usually credited with inventing the ...

On 13 September 1971 a plane carrying Mao’s anointed heir crashed in Eastern Mongolia. What really happened to Lin Biao? At around 2.30 am on 13 September 1971 a British-made Trident airliner crashed ...

Pre-Islamic history was once taboo in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Will the ‘rediscovery’ of an ancient people – the Nabataeans – encourage international tourism? The volte face has been astonishing.

Towards the end of Prospero’s Books, Peter Greenaway’s 1991 reimagining of The Tempest, John Gielgud moves through a shifting landscape of half-naked, androgynous bodies. Staring directly at the ...