The Second World War disrupted narratives of mankind’s ‘progress’, but – as William Golding captured so vividly in Lord of the Flies – human history has always been a balancing act between enlightenment and calamity.
During the Cold War successive British governments did all they could to maintain a friendship with Tito’s Yugoslavia. Why was the communist strongman so important to Westminster?
After a long battle, Britain’s Sex Discrimination Act came into force in 1975. What did it do for women?
How to finance old age has been a problem since the inception of Britain’s welfare state. Why is pension reform so difficult?
In exile, Hortense Mancini captivated 17th-century Europe – and king Charles II – with her beauty and charm. But her path to freedom was mired in scandal.
Postwar state support for agriculture in the UK has been hailed a great success, but it had unexpected consequences.
What sits beneath the planet’s crust? Scientists, writers, and conspiracy theorists have all had a guess, with Hollow-Earth Theory providing surprisingly resilient.
The wartime government’s programme of deliberate smoke production was an attempt to protect Britain from the Luftwaffe; for the National Smoke Abatement Society, the decision was a disaster.
On 16 October 1930 Britain’s sense of its historical greatness was skewered with the release of 1066 and All That.
The Indefatigable Asa Briggs: A Biography by Adam Sisman is a detailed portrait of that voluminous chronicler of Victorian things.
