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 ...

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 ...

In the spring of 1127 something very strange was going on in Peterborough. The monks of Peterborough Abbey, a venerable institution which had fallen on hard times, were unhappy: Henry I had imposed on ...

It was supposed to be a prestige project for Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, a way to convince their people – and the world at large – that the newly signed Anti-Comintern Pact was more than empty ...

In the context of American history vary widely. Describe something as a cult to a modern audience and what will most likely spring to mind is the Manson Family murders (1969), the 900 Jonestown murder ...