The early modern Islamic world was embroiled in a bitter controversy over coffee. Much ink was spilt by poets on both sides.

Rather than a catalogue of a fanciful past, Folklore: A Journey Through the Past and Present by Owen Davies and Ceri Houlbrook is a field guide to a constantly changing Britain.

Early modern cancer experiments such as that undertaken by English surgeon Samuel Smith privileged the senses, but the effects could be fatal.

Unreason reigned supreme in Zurich on 5 February 1916 as Dada made its debut at the Cabaret Voltaire.

In the first century BC Cyprus was caught between a waning Ptolemaic dynasty and an ambitious, indomitable Rome.

Hard Streets: Working-Class Lives in Charlie Chaplin’s London by Jacqueline Riding goes where few historians dare: south of the river.

Confronted by a confusing and complex national history, Polish novelist Olga Tokarczuk decided to embrace myth rather than debunk it.

In Elves and Fairies: A Short History of the Otherworld, Matthias Egeler follows the huldufólk from the wild places of Iceland, Britain, and Ireland to the domesticity of the bedtime story.