Cultural

A project to restore one of the Polish city’s 20th-century monuments has turned into a cultural battleground, writes Roger Moorhouse.

The Great Exhibition of 1851 was not only a celebration of Victorian Britain’s scientific and economic pre-eminence but also a hymn to the religion that underpinned it, argues Geoffrey Cantor.

The rise of the legal profession in late medieval and early Tudor England was greeted with disdain by the wider population. Anthony Musson asks whether the reputation of lawyers and judges as scavengers and social climbers was deserved.

The economic crisis in Greece has drawn attention to the question of where best to display treasures such as the Elgin Marbles. Jonathan Downs offers some solutions to a historical tug of war.

Miri Rubin explores the medieval galleries at the V&A and the British Museum.

Mark Juddery looks at the historical backdrop to the much-loved 1950s Hollywood musical, Singin’ in the Rain in which Hollywood tells its own story of the arrival of sound to the big screen.

The circus act was first performed on 12 November 1859.

The creator of the world's most widely spoken constructed language was born on December 15th, 1859.

The diarist began his work on January 1st 1660.

Opera has flourished in the United States. But how did this supposedly ‘elite’ art form become so deep-rooted in a nation devoted to popular culture and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal? Daniel Snowman explains.