Feature

What was it like for a Roman to encounter a Christian for the first time? As the Empire reached its greatest extent, Pliny the Younger found himself face-to-face with members of the new religious group.

‘Politics as a Vocation’, a speech made in 1919 by the German sociologist Max Weber, can lay claim to being one of the most influential political statements of the 20th century. Amid global crisis and uncertainty, it remains as relevant as ever.

Periods are a fact of life, but little talked about. How did women in the concentration camps cope with the private being made public in the most dire and extreme circumstances?

After a disastrous Second World War, Japan abolished its armed forces and embraced pacifism. With renewed tensions in East Asia, can it last?

In the medieval period you could touch the divine – and smell it, see it, hear it and taste it, sometimes all at once.

The medieval world was incredibly learned, but how did its great bank of knowledge spread – from Classical Greece to the libraries of the East and from there to the bookshelves of England?

Teenagers were agents of change in 1960s Britain, but the birth of youth movements such as the Mods was heavily indebted to the multicultural society from which they grew.

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini became a lightning rod for the mass protests which overthrew the Shah of Iran in 1979, but the causes of the Iranian Revolution lay elsewhere.

Women may be largely absent from traditional accounts of the Mongol conquests, but they played a crucial role in creating the largest of all land empires.

Problems with public transport are almost as old as New York itself. One proposed solution was nothing but hot air.