Feature

Tall tales of Pompeii’s lost Roman lives form part of a long history of sensationalism. 

The medieval court of William Rufus, son of William the Conqueror, was known as a ‘brothel of male prostitutes’.

Signed at the height of the Second World War, the Atlantic Charter set out the terms for the decolonisation of French North Africa.

The correspondence between Mary Hamilton and the future George IV is often seen as evidence of a harmless crush in the Georgian court. It was nothing of the sort. 

Mao Zedong once said that Taiwan should be independent, but the Chinese Communist Party has since changed its mind on the ‘renegade province’.

In the decades before the First World War, Polish mountaineering became a form of nationalism for a lowland people. 

Female explorers of the 19th century demolished Victorian notions of stay-at-home women. But why were they so vehemently anti-feminist? The case of Mary Wollstonecraft may hold the answer. 

Is Kazakhstan 30 or 556 years old? As the five states of Central Asia celebrate three decades of independence, they prefer the glories of the ancient past to the legacy of Soviet rule. 

The victory of the Greeks over Persia in 480 BC was more than just a landmark in naval warfare. It shaped the way the past is understood. 

Can we trust historical archives? State-run collections of documents are prone to abuse both by those who use them and their gatekeepers.