The Marquis de Morès was an extraordinary villain in an epoch crowded with the vile and the louche. After he killed a Jewish officer in a duel in 1892, a prosecutor seeking his conviction for murder...
Throughout the 1920s, MacDonald had faced accusations, especially from the left, that he was too fond of aristocratic company and the trappings of office. But it isn’t necessary to accept that his...
If historians are remembered posthumously, it tends to be for their book titles, while the books themselves gather dust. James Bryce is mostly known today for his surveys of two of history’s...
Early samurai were members of a professional warrior class who served under a daimyo; they fought with bow and arrow on horseback, in cumbersome box-like armour. This suit is in the lighter dōmaru...
The Ptolemies came too late for many histories of Greece and Egypt and too early for Rome. Alexandria, their capital, has disappeared beneath the sea and the modern city. Their grandest monument, the...
While Æthelstan’s grandfather, Alfred, had revived the practice of issuing law codes, Æthelstan was by far the most industrious legislator his dynasty had produced, responsible for six...
That slavery persisted in Muslim societies well into the 20th century is undeniable. More questions need to be asked about its distinctive features, the extent of its connection with the Atlantic trade...
Until at least the 17th century, the good folk of the Baltic region were notorious for cherishing specimens of the local snake population in their homes, keeping them well fed and watered. Were these...
Claude Villiaume’s clients appear to have been happy to embrace the notion of arbitrary fortune. For men it turned matchmaking into a game, and helped to explain failure. Women, often steeped in...
The rise of democracy coincided with the transition from wood to coal, and decolonisation in the 20th century precipitated the growth of fertiliser consumption, air travel, motor vehicles and industrial...
Mossad relied heavily on assorted European security agencies for intelligence on Palestinian activities. Not only did they often provide the intelligence Mossad needed to select its targets, they also...
For all its various forms of sophistication, the ultimate motive of gay history is often a search for people like us, even if they might not have recognised themselves as such. Untypical relationships,...
Marx was a keen student of early modern English history and it was in this period that he located the decisive shift towards an economy organised around the production of commodities. The many women spinning...
Solidarity with Commune veterans on the part of British working-class movements was usually more symbolic than active. Plenty of ‘Vive la Commune!’ and ‘Down with Capitalism!’,...
Clothing, for Caravaggio, worked in the same way as his chiaroscuro, dramatising disclosure and reticence, attraction and concealment. Caravaggio exploits dress not so much as a language, but as a way...
The origin legend was a widespread medieval genre used to account not only for peoples and nations, but also for the rise of cities, dynasties, monasteries and even landscape features. To know who we...
Intelligence – whether rumour, gossip, hearsay or clandestine leaks – was central to ambassadorial activity. Henry Wotton’s unusual status as a resident Protestant ambassador in a Catholic...
Week after week, year after year, members of the collective formed in 1977, during the Argentine military dictatorship, as Las Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo have circled the pyramid monument in the...