Alexander Lee

Pasternak and Stalin: What Was Said?

A short telephone call between Joseph Stalin and Boris Pasternak sealed the fate of a fellow writer. What exactly transpired during that fateful discussion remains subject to debate.

The Lost Years of Jesus

Did Jesus have a difficult childhood? Was his youth spent in Egypt or England, India or Japan? The four canonical gospels are quiet on his early life, leading some to speculate.

The Bruneri-Canella Case

The curious case of an apparent amnesiac in Collegno paved the way for forensic science to become one of the pillars of Italian law.

Lost Movies

Almost three quarters of the golden age of Hollywood has been lost. Preservation only began when film came to be seen as art.

Armless Fun?

In 1820 the discovery of an ancient Greek statue with missing arms posed more questions than answers.

No Laughing Matter

Aristotle’s lost treatise on laughter is a serious business. Could laughter lead to the downfall of society?

Going, going…Goethe?

The question of reconstruction was a thorny issue in postwar Germany, where celebrations of the ‘glorious’ past took on a different hue.