Official secrecy and institutional rivalry obscured the achievements of two crash programmes hastily launched to teach Japanese during the Second World War. 

The 19th-century craze for spiritualism ‘resurrected’ the dead through manipulated photography, a practice that boomed with the trauma caused by war – though it was not without its sceptics.

The nightmarish power of the Soviet passport.

A ringside seat to British domestic politics, from Chamberlain’s meeting with Hitler in October 1938 to the fall of Mussolini in July 1943.

Inspired by the fashion for Boy Scout groups, Lord Beaverbrook started his own youth movement in support of his pro-Empire campaign. 

Reporting from the frontlines of the mujahideen war against the Soviet Union.

In 1935 Stalin declared ‘life has become better’. This was clearly not the case for everyone, but feelings had to be expressed very carefully.

The historical currents that have shaped modern Central Asia.