Feature

Faced with extreme pressures, the ruler of England suffered a complete breakdown. But beware modern diagnoses of medieval mental health.

How can we work out the true value of money in the past? It depends how you do the sums.

We remember the Dutch Golden Age for its paintings – which may be why so few realise that it was Europe’s publishing powerhouse. 

The classical world created a variety of means of mobility for the disabled – both mythical and real.

Africa has been global for millennia, but its history is too often eclipsed by narratives that focus on slavery and its abolition.

In Victorian Britain, attitudes towards race, gender, disability and Empire were all to be found in the popular ‘freak shows’.

At the centre of a war-shattered Europe, Vienna was divided between the victorious Allied powers. Restoring civil society proved a major challenge. 

From the pit to Pythagoras, the self-made man rose to the top of the mathematical world and divided it in two. 

The Thai-Burma railway was built by prisoners of war in appalling conditions. The dead were treated with a dignity denied to the living.

At the beginning of the 20th century, there were 16 empires of varying size and reach. At the end of the century, there was just one: the United States. How did this happen and what role did Britain play in smoothing America’s path to global hegemony?