Volume 76 Issue 2 February 2026

‘Which moment would I most like to go back to? The Achaemenid Persian court when Alexander the Great took over in the 330s BC.’

In the fight against rising river pollution by big corporations, legal cases have had to get creative.

The testimonies of formerly enslaved people, collected in the 1930s by the Federal Writers’ Project, provide a unique archive for historians.

On 13 February 1692 the Macdonalds of Glencoe were put to the sword by troops loyal to William III. Nobody was held to account.

Runes: A Concise History by Tom Birkett looks beyond the mythical baggage to find a writing system no less remarkable and mysterious.

The early modern Islamic world was embroiled in a bitter controversy over coffee. Much ink was spilt by poets on both sides.

Rather than a catalogue of a fanciful past, Folklore: A Journey Through the Past and Present by Owen Davies and Ceri Houlbrook is a field guide to a constantly changing Britain.

Early modern cancer experiments such as that undertaken by English surgeon Samuel Smith privileged the senses, but the effects could be fatal.

Unreason reigned supreme in Zurich on 5 February 1916 as Dada made its debut at the Cabaret Voltaire.

In the first century BC Cyprus was caught between a waning Ptolemaic dynasty and an ambitious, indomitable Rome.