A young stage illusionist is recruited by the British secret service to extract a list of double agents concealed in a Russian magician’s stage prop

A deranged anarchist plans to commit the crime of a century – with Polari, coded messages and a faulty typewriter contributing to the mayhem

Jonathan Kennedy explores the (mainly) devastating effects of bacteria in the past – and now, as they proliferate and our resistance diminishes

There are vignettes of many Cambridge contemporaries – including the mysterious John Sackur, the inspiration for the invisible man in Donkeys’ Years

He dismisses the philosophy of religion as sixth-formish point-scoring. But are his own ruminations any more profound?

Edward VII’s reign is generally seen as a bright interlude between Victorian primness and the Great War – but there was considerable unrest on many fronts

After the Amboyna massacre of 1623, the newly-fledged East India Company conceded the spice trade to the Dutch – to focus instead on the riches of India

A counterfactual history of modern America serves as a backdrop to the life of the enigmatic ‘X’ – a woman of multiple personae and impenetrable disguises