France

Chevaliere d’Eon or Chevalier d’Eon? An 18th-century legal dispute between two French spies unravelled into a public battle about identity.

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

Unconventional and provocative, did the Dada artist sometimes known as Arthur Cravan save his boldest work for last?

November 2024 marks the 30th anniversary of the first passenger trains between London and Paris. What does the history of the Channel Tunnel tell us about Britain’s relationship with its neighbours?

Meant to live a life of perfect peacefulness and contemplation, in reality monks were human and fallible. How violent could life in the medieval cloister be?

The Catholic Church’s ban on wigs in the 18th century was as revealing of attitudes towards disability as vanity and sanctity.

The French Resistance sought liberation above all else. But what should the postwar nation look like? The question was as old as the Fall of France itself.

What happened to the French airmen in the Second World War who bombed France to help liberate it?

In the 18th century the existence of extraterrestrial life went from debatable hypothesis to fundamental tenet of Enlightenment thought.

In Catherine de’ Medici: The Life and Times of the Serpent Queen, Mary Hollingsworth helps the pragmatic queen escape her ‘black legend’.