Hidden in Plain Sight
We should be clear about which histories are neglected and which are not.
Volume 71 Issue 12 December 2021
A Ventriloquist Act?
Recent studies show the benefits and limitations of giving voice to the thoughts of our predecessors.
Did the Attack on Pearl Harbor Cost the Axis Powers the War?
Four historians consider the consequences of the ‘Day of Infamy’ on 7 December 1941, and whether it was the ultimate reason for Germany, Italy and Japan’s defeat.
A Peach of a Project
The author of the quaint, but much-loved Ladybird books was also a radical playwright.
A ‘Creative Microhistory’ of a Medieval Manor
The distant past is not often illustrated with plentiful descriptions of everyday life. Instead, the picture has to be put together from different sources, piece by piece, like a jigsaw. But there are often still gaps, which can be filled with historically informed creativity.
Can’t Go On
Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, had aimed to bring new life to a system in which he believed until the last.
The Judgement of Paris
A divine beauty contest leads to the most famous war of the ancient world.
Britannia’s Black Spartacus
Toussaint Louverture, the father of Haitian independence, became an unlikely star of the Victorian London stage.
Books of the Year 2021
Revolutionary France, lights out in the Ottoman Empire, gross obscenity, Napoleon’s gardens and the humble index: ten historians reflect on a year of reading.
Size Matters
In Georgian Britain, England’s ‘heaviest man’ became a celebrity, his likeness reproduced across an array of media.