Cultural

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

On 16 January 1926, the BBC broke the news that a murderous mob was storming the capital. Broadcasting the Barricades wasn’t supposed to be a hoax, but it was an effective one.

The concerns of daily life prompted early modern people to seek reassurance in fate, stars, and astrologers.

The remarkable fall of absinthe: from 19th-century ‘Green Fairy’ to scourge of society.

How did the People’s Republic of China cope with a literary canon filled with un-communist ideas? Comics called lianhuanhua were the answer, at least for a while.

What explains the Iranian state’s remarkable soft power? The answer lies in its rich – and often romanticised – history.

British agents of empire saw their actions in India through the texts of their classical educations. They looked for Alexander, cast themselves as Aeneas and hoped to emulate Augustus.

In 1874 a choir of African American singers concluded a successful tour of Britain, singing songs that confronted American racism. Victorian audiences had never heard music like it.

On 28 August 1839, the earl of Eglinton hosted a ‘medieval’ tournament to mark Queen Victoria’s coronation. It was a damp squib.

The puppet theatres of Kazakhstan combined Soviet ideals with Kazakh traditions to educate the masses.