Volume 72 Issue 5 May 2022

As conventional wisdom has it, Europe began to see the light at the end of a dark age sometime around 1500. Four experts try to date the birth of modernity.

What does it take to establish a new scientific truth? In the case of Galileo and heliocentrism, the death of its sceptics. 

Hollywood’s golden age was born of the popularity of swords and sandals on the Victorian stage.

During the Franco-Prussian War a British wine merchant was imprisoned in Cologne, accused of being a spy. The public clamoured for the government to secure his release, but wartime diplomacy was not so straightforward. 

Class interest and ostentatious generosity are the hallmarks of elite charity. So, too, is a fixation with posterity. 

The First Crusade unleashed shockwaves felt across all of Christendom. New chapters to a story started in 1099 are still being written.

In 17th-century Tuscany and Malta some women were able to hold their abusers, members of the clergy, to account.