The Sultan, the Imam and the Question of Oman
The tension between Oman’s outward-looking coastal regions and its religious interior came to a head in the 20th century. Would the country be governed by sultan or imam?
Miscellanies
The Many Faces of the Enlightened Man
In the 18th century, new scientific ideas meant new thinking about what it meant to be male and female. As everything became gendered, anxieties proliferated.
The Creatures That Devoured Leningrad
The Siege of Leningrad imposed horrific conditions on its residents, severe food shortages among them. Remarkably, many of the animals in the city’s zoo survived.
The Angkor Empire’s National Health Service
After decades of turmoil, in 1181 Jayavarman VII restored order to the Angkor Empire by embracing Buddhism and introducing an unprecedented public healthcare programme.
The Rise of the Valkyries
Life and death in a Viking battle depended not on military prowess, but on the favour of the valkyries. Why were these mythical figures, who decided a warrior’s fate, female?
From Russia (to Ireland) with Love
In 1805, a lady’s maid from Cork visited the palace of a Russian princess and inadvertently became one of the first published Irish writers on Russia.
Stalin’s Danish Mystery
The small island of Bornholm gave Stalin a Danish foothold at the end of the Second World War. Why did he give it up?
Exterminating the Grand Tour
The French Grand Tour was the preserve of the elite, but in the decades before the Revolution ‘the art of being abroad’ endured a crisis. Who should travel and why?
Arthur Conan Doyle and the Adventure of the Boer War
Eight years after giving up medicine for writing, the internationally famous creator of Sherlock Holmes became Dr Doyle once more, on the front line of the Boer War.
‘Strangled for a bird’: The Case of the Aldbury Poachers
A double murder in an English wood became a Victorian cause célèbre, provoking a national debate about the tyranny of land ownership and the loss of ancient liberties.