Recently published

What historical topic have I changed my mind on? Colonialism. I now know that it had no redeeming features.

Shadows at Noon: The South Asian Twentieth Century by Joya Chatterji is a gently revisionist account of an enduring, if ever-tottering, democracy.

How ‘lore’, a largely neglected medieval word, has found a new lease of life in fandom.

Anonymity can be a powerful shield. Tracing the culprit when it came to libellous letter-writing in the early 1900s was not straightforward

How ancient was ancient Egypt? How old is the world? And what happens when archaeology contradicts the Bible? When the Dendera Zodiac arrived in Paris, these questions exploded into the public sphere.

When it arrived on the Victorian stage, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre had a cast of new characters and a new social order.

Bismarck’s War: The Franco-Prussian War and the Making of Modern Europe by Rachel Chrastil argues that German victory was a catastrophe for Germany and the world.

Psychonauts: Drugs and the Making of the Modern Mind by Mike Jay is a fascinating study of cyclical attitudes towards self-experimentation.

What was there to fear from a medieval inquisition? For the inquisitors themselves, quite a lot.