Feature

Is it possible for dissidents to bring peaceful change to repressive regimes?

Turning chaotic havens of sloth and debauchery into systemised institutions of pain and terror, Victorian Britain’s ‘model’ prisons were anything but.

The voice of the British monarch carried considerable weight in imperial India. Its slow silencing mirrored the retreat of Britain from the subcontinent. 

‘The greatest good for the greatest number’ flounders when society cannot agree on what is ‘good’ – or ‘bad’. 

Charles Dickens’ name conjures up the quintessential English Christmas, but it is to another Charles D that we must look if we want to know what festivities were like before the Victorian makeover. 

Mikhail Gorbachev’s Perestroika triggered an outpouring of resentment across the USSR. In 1986, young Kazakhs made their voices heard, but the Soviet regime was not ready to listen.

Female volunteers such as Marie Schmolka played a decisive role in the collaborative project to rescue beleaguered Jewish children.

When the Great War broke out in 1914, the German imperial army was regarded as the finest fighting force on earth. Just four years later, it was crushed by Britain and its allies.

Caring for the mentally ill in Victorian Britain was hard, unrewarding and dangerously unregulated. Alexander Morison tried to improve things for both the unwell and their carers.