Rome’s first theatre was an enormous spectacle intended to glorify Pompey’s successes. Was it all bread and circuses? I n the ...

On 9 March 1522 the Swiss Reformation began with an ‘ostentatious eating of sausages.’ T he Reformation in Switzerland began ...

This superbly ominous story is the earliest English record of the legend of the Wild Hunt. This legend, found in folklore ...

On 5 March 1936 the prototype Spitfire made its maiden flight. Its creator R.J. Mitchell would not live to see its finest hour.

Lockwood’s This Land of Promise examines the memoirs and biographies of a selection of prominent refugees from the 16th to ...

Less famous than its 1215 predecessor, the Magna Carta of 1225 held the true power.

N ext time you reach for a bottle of painkillers, reflect on the agonies endured by surgical patients before anaesthetics were introduced in the 1840s. Waxing eloquent, Charles Dickens’ close friend ...

The volte face has been astonishing. Until 2017, or thereabouts, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was seen as the hallmark of Islamic puritanism, where compulsorily veiled women were forbidden to travel ...

The Great Peasants’ War was premodern Europe’s largest popular rising. Early stirrings in the southwestern corner of what is now Germany in the summer of 1524 grew to affect vast parts of the Holy ...