As so often in study of the past, continuing to ask the question matters more than agreeing upon an answer. Buildings made of ...

Why are you a historian of the Atlantic World? The Atlantic World is so vast and diverse; I’ll never run out of places and peoples to study. Marcus Rediker’s The Slave Ship: A Human History, as it ...

In the aftermath of the First World War, a quarter of a century before the Nuremberg and Tokyo war crimes trials, Britain, France, and other Allied or Entente powers conducted a bold experiment in ...

Disputing Disaster is a book about the First World War’s origins and causes, not – as its title suggests – the war itself. It discusses six historians who have written on a century-old debate that has ...

In 1941, down a narrow street in Rochdale was a small dark shop, visited by women with a very specific and urgent requirement. The proprietor was a ‘deep-bosomed’ lady in her sixties, overly made up ...

Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity by Diarmaid MacCulloch reminds us that when it comes to sexuality and gender, scripture is often contradictory. The Bible was always too ...

The Renaissance came later to Prague than to Venice, Flanders, or Rome. But it was no less transformative when it did. In the 16th century Prague became a place where empires converged and cultures ...

Kashmir, a small valley in the Himalayas, plays an outsized role in the national imaginations of both India and Pakistan. Formed by the river Jhelum and its tributaries, and measuring a mere 89 by 25 ...

It is, and of long time hath been, my well-beloved sister, a custom in the beginning of the New Year, for friends to send between presents or gifts, as the witnesses of their love and friendship, and ...

On Monday 25 May 1840, on a remote island 870 miles east of the Australian colony of New South Wales, 1,800 convicts celebrated the birthday of Queen Victoria. The party had been organised by the ...

When Pope Alexander VI issued the Papal Bull of May 23rd, 1493, laying down a line of demarcation, to the east of which Portugal was granted exploring rights, while Spain had the same privilege to the ...