Josephus

Who was to blame for the death of Jesus?

3 April 2021 9:00 am

In 1866, the Russian historian Alexander Popov made an astonishing discovery. Leafing through a Renaissance Slavonic translation of the first-century…

Is one of history’s most rousing speeches apocryphal?

15 June 2019 9:00 am

As rousing death-and-glory speeches go, it is one of the best. With a besieging Roman army only hours from storming…

Even Nazis weren’t quite sure how to do the Hitler salute

25 July 2015 9:00 am

Gesture politics A royal home movie from 1933 apparently showed the future Queen, aged seven, and her mother giving a…

Vespasian’s Middle East policy (it should be ours, too)

25 July 2015 9:00 am

As Ahmed Rashid argued last week, it is hard to see what the West is doing in the Middle East,…

Giotto’s ‘The Kiss of Judas’ in the Scrovegni Chapel, Padua

Justin Cartwright on redheads, anti-Semitism and the betrayal of Christ

4 April 2015 9:00 am

Peter Stanford is a writer on religious and ethical matters. He was for four years editor of the Catholic Herald.…