Feature

Cures and treatments have always offered potential riches to their inventors. But how was one supposed to know what worked and what didn’t? 

William Chester Jordan’s study of one of medieval Europe’s great monastic rivalries suggests that social mobility may have been more common in the Middle Ages than historians previously thought.

In October 1943 the Allies liberated the area around the infamous volcano in the Bay of Naples. Its sudden eruption in March 1944, as war in Italy raged, stretched the resources of the combined services to the limit. What followed was an exemplary emergency operation.

Mary Shelley’s great novel is not a commentary on the Industrial Revolution, nor is it a simple retelling of the myth of Prometheus. It is far more original than that.

Was Nero the Antichrist? The bestial image of the Roman emperor as the enemy of Christians persists, but the truth is more complex.

A terrorist attack on Wall Street a century ago aroused suspicion of anarchists, socialists and foreigners, as America saw danger around every corner.

Perfumes and sweet scents affect our sense of smell, but their true realm is that of the imagination.

The Irish Rebellion of 1641 offered an opportunity for the ambitions of a well-connected group of Puritan politicians and businessmen. The result was civil war.

The conflict that broke out between France and an ambitious new German state 150 years ago can lay claim to be the first modern war.