Behind the Times

The issue of assisted dying was first put before Parliament in 1936. Many of the same questions remain, but the arguments have changed.

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

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?

American democracy has been haunted by the spectre of a Caesar-type figure since the birth of the republic. Have such fears ever been justified?

Shipwrecks are an easily overlooked material legacy of the Second World War, but they are rising to the surface as diplomatic issues.

Interrail gave young Europeans the freedom of the continent in the 1970s. Five decades on, people are still taking the train.

Under Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, public ceremonies honouring the eternal life of Italy’s far-right dead have grown larger. 

Ireland’s experience of partition informed the attitudes of people across the island towards British plans for Palestine. Today it informs sympathies in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Forty years of opening and reform persuaded a lot of people that the Chinese are not really communists. But modern China was modelled on the USSR, and its leaders want to revert to their Leninist roots.

Columbine marked the beginning of a new era of high-profile mass shootings in the US. Was the attack the inevitable outcome of lax controls and a culture of gun glorification?