Volume 76 Issue 9 September 2026
Golden Horses, Red Square
In 1935 Turkmen farmers rode their horses 4,300 kilometres across the Soviet Union to impress Moscow.
‘Desk Revolutionaries’ by Biancamaria Fontana review
Desk Revolutionaries: The Men of the French Directory, 1795-9 by Biancamaria Fontana sets the record straight on the French Revolution’s great experiment in governance.
How the Carthusians Resisted the Reformation
The consequences of Carthusian defiance showed the brutality of the dissolution of the monasteries.
‘The Rise and Fall of American Europe’ by Glyn Morgan review
The Rise and Fall of American Europe by Glyn Morgan finds a continent powerless before a capricious United States. Is it too late to teach an old world new tricks?
Crimped by the Prince of Shanghai
Sailors looking for work in the 19th century risked getting crimped – or shanghaied – and caught in a whirlpool of exploitation and corruption.
The Women Who Fought the Mau Mau
During the Kenya Emergency, white women took up arms against the Mau Mau rebels. What did it mean to be both domestic and violent?
‘The Traveller’ by Andrea Wulf review
The Traveller: The Revolutionary Life of George Forster and His Search for Humanity by Andrea Wulf brings the most enlightened of Enlightenment radicals into the mainstream.
Petitions, Puritans, and the Civil War
Early Stuart England saw the emergence of mass petitioning. These expressions of collective grievance would advance popular politics, uncover division, and lay the road to war.
What is an Information Age?
From the printing press to the internet, the spread of information has changed the world. How do we recognise an age defined by it?