The great explorers of the past dismissed as mercenary opportunists
Simon Park follows the current trend of accusing Columbus, Magellan, Da Gama and other famous navigators of seeking personal enrichment above all else
Cambridge’s Palestine vandals must be expelled
Frustrated by a High Court injunction that prohibits protestors from occupying University buildings in Cambridge so as to block a…
Is the tide turning on restitution?
When passions are aroused, all of us are liable to overstate our case. Dan Hicks, a curator at Oxford’s extraordinary…
The British Museum doesn’t need a slavery gallery
The British Museum is beginning to think about the possibility of embarking on a massive programme of refurbishment, repairs and…
Why is Labour ignoring Jewish academics over the Free Speech Act?
It is difficult to complain about the sentiments expressed by Bridget Phillipson, the Secretary of State for Education, in her…
Why are the sailors who first braved the Atlantic so often ignored?
Long before Columbus crossed the ocean in 1492, the Phoenicians had discovered the Azores, and by the year 1000 Norse men and women were eking out an existence in Greenland
Labour’s outrageous attack on academic free speech
In an extraordinary outburst, a government source has described the new Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act, introduced by the…
Should this Anglo-Saxon drama have a diverse cast?
A new eight-part TV series co-produced by the BBC about England in 1066, entitled King and Conqueror, has diverse actors playing…
The British Museum shouldn’t make foreigners pay
The interim director of the British Museum, Mark Jones, has broached the idea that our national museums should charge foreign…
Why won’t this museum let women see its Igbo mask?
The Pitt-Rivers Museum in Oxford has won a reputation for its energetic programme of ‘decolonisation’. Its director, Laura van Broekhoven,…
Are all great civilisations doomed?
If plague, war or natural disasters don’t destroy our own, then ‘a cascading systems failure’ seems likely, on past evidence, says Paul Cooper
Trinity College Cambridge has rushed to judgement on Captain Cook
Cambridge has made a mistake in returning to the tribe that made them some spears collected by Captain Cook’s men…
A wealth of knowledge salvaged from shipwrecks
Goods found on board can illuminate trade routes and global connections, often going back thousands of years, in ways no other archaeological sites can
The danger of returning the Ghanaian ‘Crown Jewels’
I put the case in last week’s Spectator that museums in this country have been gripped by a sort of…
Does it matter if Hannibal is played by a black man?
It is becoming a familiar conundrum: whether to employ actors who match the ethnicity of the person they are portraying.…
Was the Black Death racist?
Even the Black Death of the mid-fourteenth century, we are now being told, practised racial discrimination as it raged through…
Tracey Emin and the problem with museum trustees
The Royal Academy has nominated Tracey Emin to be a trustee of the British Museum. There is quite a fanfare…
Why are Cambridge University’s librarians judging ‘problematic’ books?
Librarians across Cambridge University are on the look out. Their target, among the ten million-odd volumes in the main library…
Sic transit gloria mundi
Katherine Pangonis also traces the histories of Tyre, Antioch, Syracuse and Ravenna, once proud centres of government, trade and culture
Our future life on Earth depends on the state of the ocean
As the world’s thermometer, the ocean keeps everything in balance, but carbon emissions and our use of it as a dumping ground is threatening its life, says Helen Czerski
Why is Netflix pretending that Cleopatra was black?
‘I remember my grandmother saying to me: I don’t care what they tell you in school, Cleopatra was black.’ So…
Was Leonardo da Vinci’s mother a slave?
There is great excitement in Italy, which has spilled over into the British press: Carlo Vecce, a professor from Naples,…
Captain Cook’s Aboriginal spears belong in Cambridge, not Australia
On the eve of the First World War, Trinity College, Cambridge deposited four spears collected by Captain Cook during his…
Why has president Xi got my book about the Mediterranean?
A few days ago, an email arrived from someone I know in China: my book The Great Sea had been…
