A Peach of a Project
The author of the quaint, but much-loved Ladybird books was also a radical playwright.
Recently published
A ‘Creative Microhistory’ of a Medieval Manor
The distant past is not often illustrated with plentiful descriptions of everyday life. Instead, the picture has to be put together from different sources, piece by piece, like a jigsaw. But there are often still gaps, which can be filled with historically informed creativity.
Can’t Go On
Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, had aimed to bring new life to a system in which he believed until the last.
The Judgement of Paris
A divine beauty contest leads to the most famous war of the ancient world.
November Quiz
Who was the first woman to be granted a hereditary peerage? When was the attack on Pearl Harbor?
Britannia’s Black Spartacus
Toussaint Louverture, the father of Haitian independence, became an unlikely star of the Victorian London stage.
Books of the Year 2021
Revolutionary France, lights out in the Ottoman Empire, gross obscenity, Napoleon’s gardens and the humble index: ten historians reflect on a year of reading.
Size Matters
In Georgian Britain, England’s ‘heaviest man’ became a celebrity, his likeness reproduced across an array of media.
Lynching the British
The actions of lynch mobs during the late 19th century damaged the United States’ relationship with Britain and threatened its self-appointed role as the world’s moral guardian.
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.