The mysterious death of Amye Robsart – murdered, as many of her contemporaries thought, at the instigation of her scheming husband, favourite of Queen Elizabeth I – provides one of the strangest unsolved problems in Elizabethan history.
The news pioneer was born on July 21st, 1816.
The teeming metropolis was once an undeveloped natural bay which became the site of a battle between Portugal and France for control of the New World.
Kate Wiles surveys one of the world's oldest surviving maps, prepared for a quarrying expedition led by Ramesses IV.
The life and thought of Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, and the competing claims for his legacy.
Behind the serious face of the Lord Protector lay a man with a taste for terrible puns, pillow fights and unseemly practical jokes.
The leading light of the French Annales school revolutionised the writing of history by imbuing it with wider, holistic, narratives and literary flair, says Alexander Lee.
The gradual opening of Chinese archives has revealed the appalling truth about Chairman Mao’s genocidal Great Leap Forward.
Louis Braille’s tactile reading system made literacy for the blind a reality, but he was indebted to an officer in Napoleon’s army.
