Literature

The industry of fake charters, from the tenth century, to its zenith two centuries later.

What sort of society produced Shakespeare?

How has The Beano’s Dennis the Menace survived the rise of television, increased cultural consumption and the digital age? 

It is often claimed that press censorship came to an end in England at the close of the 17th century. But it persisted, thanks to an unsavoury network of government spies.

Illustrated picture books in Victorian England reached new aesthetic heights. But was it always for the benefit of the children?

Roman poet Catullus transformed an unremarkable bird – the sparrow – into a contested symbol of eroticism.

A new translation finds Beowulf comfortably at home in the 21st century.

Erasing women writers in the name of uplifting them. 

The ‘Angels of Mons’, a short story written in the earliest days of the First World War, became an enduring symbol of British providence.