Epidemics spread mistrust, as communities seek to blame their plight on outsiders or those at the margins of society. Yet the historical record reveals that outbreaks are more likely to bring people together than force them apart.
Halley’s Comet will not be visible again until 2061. But how did scientists discover how to accurately predict its return?
A letter from the teenager Margery Brews to her suitor John Paston contains the oldest surviving Valentine greeting in English. It is an extraordinary window on love and marriage in the late Middle Ages.
A nuanced history of the French Revolution, which shows that its facts are anything but fixed.
Klaus Dodds looks back 50 years to a crucial – and ultimately tragic – moment in the UK’s exploitation of its oil and gas resources.
The success of the medieval Teutonic Knights owed much to the charismatic leadership of Hermann von Salza, one of the most dynamic individuals of the 13th century.
Men’s awkwardness when talking about their bodies, especially sexual health, has changed little since the 17th century.
When India and Pakistan gained independence from Britain in 1947, the region’s Princely States – including tiny Sikkim – became pawns in South Asia’s great power politics.
We may know it when we see it, but corruption is not a fixed concept. Mark Knights explains how 300 years of scandal have forged perceptions of what is – and what is not – corrupt.
England’s legal system, which has since spread beyond its country of origin, resulted from an uncommon combination of centuries of input from a wide variety of sources. Harry Potter traces its roots and follows its branches.
