Volume 75 Issue 1 January 2025

How many planets are there? As with the discovery of Uranus, the answer depends on who you ask.

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.

What makes someone a king? More importantly, what unmakes a king? Henry II’s experiment in co-kingship saw one Henry III fall and another rise.

Naples 1343: The Unexpected Origins of the Mafia – Amedeo Feniello’s history of the Camorra – has this much in common with the case against them: it’s all about the evidence.

There was no law permitting cremation, but there was no law against it either. On 13 January 1884, a Welsh druid took the matter to trial.

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

Rebecca’s radical rural protests consumed South Wales in the 19th century. Who – or what – was she?

In The Tree Hunters: How the Cult of the Arboretum Transformed Our Landscape, Thomas Pakenham reveals the discoveries of Britain’s buccaneering botanists.

Ocean: A History of the Atlantic Before Columbus by John Haywood and Tracks on the Ocean: A History of Trailblazing, Maps and Maritime Travels by Sara Caputo search beyond the swell.

Modernity is a ubiquitous phenomenon which defines the age in which we are living, heralding progress and enlightenment – does it even exist?