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.
As the father of descriptive geography, Strabo of Amasia provides a unique view of the early Roman Empire.
The ancestor of the London Gazette was launched on 16 November 1665, surviving its bitter rival to become the oldest newspaper in the English-speaking world still in print.
As the medieval book trade declined, Oxford scribes had to turn their hands to other crafts to get by.
On 16 October 1930 Britain’s sense of its historical greatness was skewered with the release of 1066 and All That.
In the chaos unleashed by the October Revolution, Mikhail Bulgakov found a past become fragmented and confused, and history the domain of madmen and devils.
The lifelong rivalry of two early modern Neapolitan printers was a battle of books, power, and, ultimately, fire.
For those living on the Greek island of Ithaka, The Odyssey is written all around.
More than science waiting to be understood, The Medieval Moon: A History of Haunting and Blessing by Ayoush Lazikani illuminates the enchanted orb of poets.
Though its meaning may have shifted over the centuries since its Anglo-Saxon origins, ‘middle earth’ is far from fantasy.
