Recently published

Cloves, grown in Indonesia, crossed the globe in the Middle Ages, showing how interconnected the medieval world was.

Europe’s Roma were the victims of Nazi genocide during the Second World War, but their persecution did not end in 1945. 

The support and camaraderie of close-knit communities were a double-edged sword. Nothing was private and reputations could be ruined at the twitch of the curtain.

Flowers formed from pith paper captured the imagination of British society in the 19th century, sparking a search for the elusive ‘rice paper’ plant.

A fresh account of how Londoners responded to the impact of the Second World War. 

Barbados’ decision to remove Queen Elizabeth II as head of state was inevitable. Why did it take so long?

With the US riven by civil war, Napoleon III seized the opportunity to install an emperor in Mexico. Maximilian’s new regime soon fell apart in a catastrophic manner.

Official secrecy and institutional rivalry obscured the achievements of two crash programmes hastily launched to teach Japanese during the Second World War. 

The 19th-century craze for spiritualism ‘resurrected’ the dead through manipulated photography, a practice that boomed with the trauma caused by war – though it was not without its sceptics.

The nightmarish power of the Soviet passport.