History Matters

The wine trade in medieval Tunis was lucrative, but it caused a moral quandary for the ruling Hafsids.

Life at sea was hard. An early modern ship’s surgeon had to treat not just broken bones but distress and trauma. 

Malibu’s 1960s Beauty Farm aimed to get a new generation of teenagers marriage-ready

How should we see the natural world? For Descartes it was a mechanism, but a wondrous one.

Britain’s first book-of-the-month club – the Book Society – brought reading to a vast new audience. But not without some controversy.

How to reform an ancient Greek tyrant? Plato’s final advice to Dionysius the Younger was not well received.

In the early 20th century the prison population in England and Wales was in sharp decline, despite a rise in crime. 

Were the lost bones of medieval King Ethelbert hidden in Sherborne Abbey? A convenient discovery suggested they were. 

Reports from the First Crusade brought tales of victorious Christian soldiers eating dead bodies.

Margaret Thatcher struggled to write her own speeches. Who put the words in her mouth?