Epidemics spread mistrust, as communities seek to blame their plight on outsiders or those at the margins of society. Yet the historical record reveals that outbreaks are more likely to bring people together than force them apart.
A letter from the teenager Margery Brews to her suitor John Paston contains the oldest surviving Valentine greeting in English. It is an extraordinary window on love and marriage in the late Middle Ages.
A nuanced history of the French Revolution, which shows that its facts are anything but fixed.
Klaus Dodds looks back 50 years to a crucial – and ultimately tragic – moment in the UK’s exploitation of its oil and gas resources.
Men’s awkwardness when talking about their bodies, especially sexual health, has changed little since the 17th century.
We may know it when we see it, but corruption is not a fixed concept. Mark Knights explains how 300 years of scandal have forged perceptions of what is – and what is not – corrupt.
England’s legal system, which has since spread beyond its country of origin, resulted from an uncommon combination of centuries of input from a wide variety of sources. Harry Potter traces its roots and follows its branches.
As calls for women’s suffrage gained momentum following the Civil War, an uncomfortable racial faultline emerged dividing white suffragists from their African-American sisters.
Oriental despot or martyr to fascism? Three very different writers reported on the court of Haile Selassie over his reign, producing contrasting accounts of Ethiopia’s emperor.
Poor and small, Portugal was at the edge of late medieval Europe. But its seafarers created the age of ‘globalisation’, which continues to this day.
