Oswald of Northumbria – an Anglo-Saxon saint-king of the north for our time
In Hamlet a gravedigger asks the riddle: ‘What is he that builds stronger than either the mason, the shipwright, or…
What did the Romans ever do for London?
When Bishop Guy of Amiens looked across the Channel in the 11th century he saw ‘teeming London [which] shines bright.…
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…
Maxwell Knight — a great spymaster and an honourable man
I once asked Baroness Manningham-Buller, the former head of MI5, what she did to relax. Nailing me to the wall…
The map-maker’s task may never be done
The map-maker’s task may never be done, says Alex Burghart. Seven new islands have appeared in the past decade alone
Equipped for life with a copy of Thucydides
‘What distinguishes Cambridge from Oxford,’ wrote A.A. Milne in 1939, is that nobody who has been to Cambridge feels impelled…
The realm of England: from the Pennines to the Pyrenees
Most people know more about the 12th century than they think they do. This is, as Richard Huscroft reminds us…