History Matters

A Black Jewish man arrived in Venice with stories of a lost Jewish kingdom that could save Europe’s Jews. Why was he believed? 

When a Victorian celebrity sportsman was found to be taking performance-enhancing drugs it caused a sensation, not a scandal.

Privatisation of Chile’s natural resources was a pillar of Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship.

Evelyn Cheesman travelled to Vanuatu and brought back a poison-tipped spear and a new understanding of the natural world.

Hollywood’s Cold War dissidents in Ireland.

A now commonplace device, Joseph Priestley’s timeline revolutionised how we view history. 

The anti-Russian poetry of Frances Browne, the ‘Blind Poetess of Ulster’.

Marketed as the taste of French summer, Orangina’s origins are complicated.

Westminster Abbey was the focus of the world during the recent coronation. How and why was it built?

Hong Kong in the 1950s had a nomadic floating population that needed to be counted in the census – but how?