History Matters

How did the People’s Republic of China cope with a literary canon filled with un-communist ideas? Comics called lianhuanhua were the answer, at least for a while.

A viking mercenary who fought on three sides, who was Thorkell the Tall?

Robert Clive’s death has long been attributed to suicide. What is the evidence?

The First World War revealed the bad state of Britain’s teeth. Intervention was required to keep the nation biting fit.

Misfit, Old West villain or tragic hero of the O.K. Corral: who was the real Doc Holliday?

How the first Conservative leadership election modernised the party in the 1960s.

The often overlooked life of Robert Fergusson, Edinburgh’s unofficial poet laureate and Scotland’s voice.

How a lost ballad detailing the Inquisition’s sentencing of 28 alleged Basque witches spread a witchcraft panic through 17th-century Spain.

The acute housing crisis of mid-Victorian Britain generated stormy opinions about the nature of state intervention and the need for ‘wholesome despotism’.

The Catholic Church’s ban on wigs in the 18th century was as revealing of attitudes towards disability as vanity and sanctity.