Charles de Gaulle is Sentenced to Death
Court-martialled in absentia on 2 August 1940, the Vichy regime confiscated de Gaulle’s property and condemned him to death.
Volume 75 Issue 8 August 2025
Reduce and Seduce at the Teenage Beauty Farm
Malibu’s 1960s Beauty Farm aimed to get a new generation of teenagers marriage-ready
‘José Martí Reader: Writings on the Americas’ review
José Martí Reader: Writings on the Americas, edited by Deborah Shnookal and Mirta Muñiz, collects the works of Cuba's ‘Apostle of Independence’.
‘Saving’ South Africa’s San Peoples
By the early 20th century the indigenous San peoples of South Africa were deemed to be almost extinct. The arguments for their protection drew on colonial methods of wildlife preservation and reduced them to the status of an endangered species.
Shakespeare’s Lost Years
‘What’s past is prologue’ Shakespeare wrote – but so little is known of his own. There are plenty of theories, each as implausible as the next.
Ship Shape: British Naval Strategy After Napoleon
British military engagement in northwest Europe did not pause after Waterloo and resume in 1914. The intervening century saw fluctuations in French power – and the creation of a strategic system to control it.
The Great Destroyer: Cyrus, Babylon, and Jerusalem
The ancient world found him to have achieved greatness and thrust it upon his name, but was the destruction of Babylon Cyrus’ divinely ordained destiny?
Hunting Heretics: Inside the Medieval Inquisition
More than 5,000 people were interviewed during the Great Inquisition of medieval Toulouse. What did this mean for those ordinary people called to give evidence?
‘Make the Foreigner Pay’: When Britain Tried Tariffs
In 1903 a group of politicians tried to sell tariffs as a panacea to all of Britain’s problems. Would the public buy it?