Volume 72 Issue 9 September 2022

Death of a Master Forger

John Payne Collier died on 17 September 1883, after a lifetime of creating deliberate fictions, falsehoods and forgeries.

Filling the Gaps

Notes in the margins of early modern books can be very revealing about their readers’ lives and interests. 

Sri Lanka’s Deep Wounds

Sri Lanka’s historic ethnic divisions were forged during British colonisation and a bloody civil war. Could the current crisis help unify a divided country? 

Assassin’s Creed

Was the assassination of Sir Henry Wilson the ‘murder that triggered the Irish Civil War’?

The Face of Beatrice Cenci

The painting that inspired Shelley and Stendahl is thought to be of a young woman executed on 11 September 1599 for the murder of her father.

Knobs or Points?

Is lightning natural or divine? Opinion split royalists and republicans.