Invisible Hands
The ayah is a familiar figure of the Raj. While new research shows they were much less common than once thought, it has also shed fresh light on their lives and experiences.
History Matters
Thoughts, opinions and commentary on all things historical.
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Crimes of Fashion
Clothes in early modern England could quite literally be to die for.
All Too Graphic
Leaked photographs of colonial atrocities during the Malayan ‘Emergency’ shocked postwar Britain.
A Peach of a Project
The author of the quaint, but much-loved Ladybird books was also a radical playwright.
Britannia’s Black Spartacus
Toussaint Louverture, the father of Haitian independence, became an unlikely star of the Victorian London stage.
In Good Spirits
Alcohol was an integral part of diplomacy in early modern Russia.
The Doctor Is In
Mills & Boon’s medical romances helped make the NHS more appealing to an ambivalent public.
Swimming in the Sahara
What can rock art of the desert tell us about life and death 10,000 years ago?
Out on Good Behaviour
Mississippi’s governors have had a unique approach to prison labour and prisoner rehabilitation.
Women at War
How did women experience warfare in early medieval Britain?