The Lives of Others
To imagine the beliefs and desires of our fellow beings is fundamental to the pursuit of history. Such empathy is needed now more than ever.
History Today
Is the Story of ‘The Few’ More Myth Than Reality?
Eighty years on from the height of the Battle of Britain, four historians confront the nature of this key episode in the Second World War.
Portrait of the Portrait Artist
Holbein’s creative life during three decades of extraordinary political, religious and intellectual turbulence.
The Jellyfish Problem
Plant, animal or other? The struggle to categorise jellyfish mirrors the desire to impose a hierarchy on the natural world.
End of the Edge of the World
The last islanders living on the small archipelago of St Kilda were evacuated on 29 August 1930.
Frankenstein: Between Two Worlds
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.
The Lessons of Shell Shock
The global crisis wrought by the First World War prompted the birth of free mental health care for the treatment of shell shock and ‘war neuroses’.
Victorian Britain’s Culture War
The abolition of slavery was only the beginning of a culture war on race and empire that divided the intellectual classes of Victorian Britain.
Should Hagia Sophia be a Museum or Mosque?
Whether a museum or mosque, Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia has been a monument to selective readings of Turkey’s history.
Nero Versus the Christians
Was Nero the Antichrist? The bestial image of the Roman emperor as the enemy of Christians persists, but the truth is more complex.