History Matters

Concern for animal welfare can be precarious, as the history of Britain’s pit ponies shows.

Colonial schools in Africa eroded national identity and pride; in Sierra Leone a new way of teaching had to be found.

Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf was an unexpected bestseller, whose success rose and fell with its author.

How did Sun Tzu and The Art of War become synonymous with strategy in the West?

The experiences of medieval university students are familiar: they missed their mothers, asked for money and got into trouble.

Anonymity can be a powerful shield. Tracing the culprit when it came to libellous letter-writing in the early 1900s was not straightforward

When it arrived on the Victorian stage, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre had a cast of new characters and a new social order.

What was there to fear from a medieval inquisition? For the inquisitors, quite a lot.

A Black Jewish man arrived in Venice with stories of a lost Jewish kingdom that could save Europe’s Jews. Why was he believed? 

When a Victorian celebrity sportsman was found to be taking performance-enhancing drugs it caused a sensation, not a scandal.