Volume 71 Issue 11 November 2021

Pius X ends use of Castrati

The Pope, in a bull of 22 November 1903, ended the use of the male singers in the Sistine Chapel, who had previously dominated men’s opera.

Summer of ’59

The gruelling voting, the arduous politicking and the practical side of the 1559 papal conclave.

The Doctor Is In

Mills & Boon’s medical romances helped make the NHS more appealing to an ambivalent public. 

Beginning at the End

A childhood world of fallen heroes and shattered certainties experienced during the fall of communism in Albania.