Feature

A Congolese man sits looking at a severed hand and foot. Museum of Ethnography. Public Domain.

Roger Casement’s Heart of Darkness

The grim reality underlying Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness echoed the growing moral outrage over the murderous rubber trade. For Roger Casement, it became a moral crusade.

Oswald Shoots JFK

William Rubinstein reviews the research of 'amateur historians' on the Kennedy assassination and suggests a new motive for Lee Harvey Oswald's actions.

Scissors or Sword? The Symbolism of a Medieval Haircut

Simon Coates explores the symbolic meanings attached to hair in the early medieval West, and how it served to denote differences in age, sex, ethnicity and status.

Edward Jenner vaccinating a boy, oil painting by E.E. Hillemacher, 1884. Wellcome Collection. Public Domain.

The End of Smallpox

The smallpox vaccine was attacked by a widespread 19th-century anti-vax movement. Facing such hostility, how did smallpox become the first disease eradicated by immunisation?

President Ronald Reagan makes his Star Wars speech from the Oval Office, 23 March 1983. US National Archives and Records Administration. Public Domain.

Ronald Reagan and Star Wars

The popularity of the sci-fi epic Star Wars proved timely for Ronald Reagan and the Strategic Defense Initiative.

The Soviet Olympic team marches into the stadium at the opening of the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, the first one contested by the USSR. Helsinki City Museum (CC0).

The Cold War and the Olympics

From the recognition of East Germany to the banishment of Taiwan and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, diplomatic disputes dogged the Olympics throughout the Cold War.

Historical map of Mars from Giovanni Schiaparelli (1888)

The Martian Century

Roger Hennessy tells of a hundred years of investigation, imagination and speculation about life on Mars.

50 Years of the NHS

Charles Webster reflects on the achievements and shortcomings of fifty years of the National Health Service.

Drawings of the funeral procession of Elizabeth I of England to to Westminster Abbey, 28th April 1603 : the horse trapped with velvet, led by two attendants; the Sergeant of the Vestry and Children of the Chapel Royal;

‘There was such a generall sighing and groning, and weeping, and the like hath not beene seene or knowne in the memorie of man’: visual images of the death of Elizabeth I played a key role in her funeral and in creating the ensuing cult of Gloriana.