History Matters

Cloves, grown in Indonesia, crossed the globe in the Middle Ages, showing how interconnected the medieval world was.

Inspired by the fashion for Boy Scout groups, Lord Beaverbrook started his own youth movement in support of his pro-Empire campaign. 

In 1935 Stalin declared ‘life has become better’. This was clearly not the case for everyone, but feelings had to be expressed very carefully.

Recently discovered papyri give unprecedented insight into the lives of the workers building the Great Pyramid of Giza.

The ayah is a familiar figure of the Raj. While new research shows they were much less common than once thought, it has also shed fresh light on their lives and experiences.

Clothes in early modern England could quite literally be to die for.

Leaked photographs of colonial atrocities during the Malayan ‘Emergency’ shocked postwar Britain.

The author of the quaint, but much-loved Ladybird books was also a radical playwright.

Toussaint Louverture, the father of Haitian independence, became an unlikely star of the Victorian London stage.

Alcohol was an integral part of diplomacy in early modern Russia.