History
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…
Why do people risk their lives to fight for a foreign cause?
What’s the point of a cover if not to judge a book by? One look at the image on the…
Did a vodka ban precipitate the Russian Revolution?
It’s one of the more mysterious features of human history that people of every era and in almost every place…
The vibrant tradition of English folk song
After hundreds of densely packed pages on folk song in England — a subject for which I share Steve Roud’s…
How cool is your fridge?
The fridge may have saved us from food poisoning, but is it now poisoning the planet, wonders Stephen Bayley
Reading Norman Davies’s global history is like wading through porridge
Following Norman Davies’s explorations is like travelling, mildly jet-lagged, from one air-conditioned lounge to another, says Philip Hensher
Why has there never been a hit musical about the history of Britain?
Why has there never been a hit musical about British history? Iain Hollingshead investigates
From blissful dawn to bleak despair: the end of the revolutionary dream
Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey were undergraduates when they met in June 1794, Coleridge at Cambridge university and Southey…
What do Robin Hood, Jack the Ripper and Winston Churchill have in common?
Houdini, Antarctica, a maternity ward, the electric chair – they’re all subjects of failed musicals. But it’s impossible to predict what will work, says Roger Lewis
Capital dramas on and off the stage
Theatre buildings are seriously interesting – as I ought to have appreciated sooner in the course of 25 years writing…
Centuries of calculation – from tally sticks to computers
It’s odd, when you think about it, that mathematics ever got going. We have no innate genius for numbers. Drop…
The source of Mozart’s inspiration - a great musical whodunnit
If you were to compare Mozart to a bird it wouldn’t be the starling. Possibly the wood thrush or nightingale,…
Wolves, wheat and wool: in search of old England
Englishness is big business in the nation of shopkeepers, and not just in politics and tourism. In literature, the gypsy…
From anchorites to zeppelins: the giddy range of Levitation
Levitation. We all know what it is: the ‘disregard for gravity’, as Peter Adey puts it in his new book,…
Michael Kidson — in a class of his own
The Enigma of Kidson is a quintessentially Etonian book: narcissistic, complacent, a bit silly and ultimately beguiling. It is the…
RSC's latest is like a week-long episode of Blackadder without the jokes
The RSC’s summer blockbuster is about Queen Anne. It’s called Queen Anne. It opens at the Inns of Court where…
Hitler’s glamorous high flyers
Keith Lowe on Nazi Germany’s two remarkable female pilots, both holders of the Iron Cross, First Class
Hilary Mantel explains the difference between facts and truths
‘History is not the past,’ says the writer Hilary Mantel in the first of her Reith Lectures on Radio 4…
Is London’s Green Belt responsible for its housing crisis?
‘The area’s isolation has given it a strong sense of community and independence,’ runs the Wikipedia entry on New Addington.…
The post-truth is out there
In a political ‘post-truth’ world, currently the subject of a slew of books, emotions and personal belief are said to…
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