History
What would happen if the Gospels were judged in a history contest?
This week, the Wolfson History Prize announced its shortlist. It is always worth drawing attention to, precisely because it is…
How climate change led to capitalism
At a dinner recently I was told the story of a Canadian billionaire (now defined in banking circles as someone…
A stubborn Conservative PM attempting to negotiate with Germany? Not Theresa May but Neville Chamberlain
When lists are compiled of our best and worst prime ministers (before the present incumbent), the two main protagonists of…
Danny Dyer’s Right Royal Family might well be the oddest TV show of recent times
Last year on Who Do You Think You Are?, Danny Dyer — EastEnders actor and very possibly Britain’s most cockney…
Snatching victory from the jaws of defeat: the triumph of Rorke’s Drift
On 22 January last year, the entrance whiteboard at London Underground’s Dollis Hill carried a brief factual statement: On this…
Let there be night: adventures in the dark
Edward S. Curtis’s 1914 photograph, ‘Dancing to Restore an Eclipsed Moon’, shows the Kwakiutl tribe of North American Indians circling…
The age of chivalry was an age of devilry
Agatha Christie’s spirit must be loving this poisonous new historical entertainment. Eleanor Herman has already enjoyed the success of Sex…
Neil MacGregor: belief is what holds a society together
‘But what must it be like for the fish?’ We’re talking about cormorants, Neil MacGregor and I, and the spectacular…
The facts – and fiction – of piracy
Avast there, scurvy dogs! For a nation founded on piracy (the privateer Sir Francis Drake swelled the exchequer by raiding…
To say this is a ‘once in a generation’ exhibition seems absurdly modest
‘The barbarians drive us to the sea, the sea drives us to the barbarians; between these two means of death…
Celebrating the 1918 Armistice resulted in thousands more deaths
Reflecting on the scenes of celebration, the ‘overpowering entrancements’, that he had witnessed in November 1918 on the first Armistice…
In the garden of good and evil: the power of the poppy
America has for years been struggling with a shortage of the drugs it uses to execute people, yet it was…
Just a man: Demystifying Napoleon
Who says that the ‘great man’ theory of history is dead? Following hard on the heels of Andrew Roberts’s magnificent…
Stitches in time: The history of the world through the eye of a needle
I recently read a book in which the author, describing rural life in the early 19th century, casually mentioned clothing…
A date with Venus in Tahiti
There is something about the Transit of Venus that touches the imagination in ways that are not all to do…
John Lilburne: champion of liberty and born belligerent
John Lilburne was only 43 when he died in 1657, an early death even for the time. But in many…
Why is it that so many leading Brexiteers studied history?
What do Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Dominic Cummings all have in common? They are Brexiteers, of course. Yet little…
2018: a year of dangerous liaisons with Russia
First it was McMafia. After which it was the Skripals. Then the World Cup. Come the end of the year…
The artist who breathes Technicolour life into historic photographs
There is something of The Wizard of Oz about Marina Amaral’s photographs. She whisks us from black-and-white Kansas to shimmering…
Russia’s obsession with securing a warm-water port changed the history of Central Asia
In the 13th century, having overrun and terrorised Europe as far as Budapest, and in the process possibly bringing with…
The cruel end of Emmanuel Barthélemy –as a waxwork in the Chamber of Horrors
This is a biography that begins with a bang, swiftly followed by puddles of blood, shrieks of ‘Murder!’ and a…
The best single-volume history of the Great War yet written
The historiography of the Great War is stupendous, the effects of the conflict being so far-reaching that even today historians…
The splendour and squalor surrounding the Sun King
The château at Versailles remained the grandest palace in the whole of Europe from the moment that Louis XIV established…
Why are there no pubs called after Lord North?
If you associate Lord Salisbury more with a pub than with politics, here is Andrew Gimson to the rescue, with…
For some soldiers, the VC was easier to win than to wear
‘The Victoria Cross,’ gushed a mid-19th-century contributor to the Art Journal, ‘is thoroughly English in every particular. Given alike to…
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