Volume 74 Issue 10 October 2024

Robert Fergusson, artist unknown, 18th century. NPL - DeA Picture Library/Bridgeman Images.

Robert Fergusson: Scotia’s Bard

The often overlooked life of Robert Fergusson, Edinburgh’s unofficial poet laureate and Scotland’s voice.

An auto de fe in Valladolid, 1558. Print attributed to Claes Visscher, 1596-1652. Opposite: an auto de fe in a courtyard, by Sebastián de Herrera-Barnuevo, 1619-71. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Public Domain.

The Ballad of the Inquisition’s Greatest Witch Trial

How a lost ballad detailing the Inquisition’s sentencing of 28 alleged Basque witches spread a witchcraft panic through 17th-century Spain.

’Accusing the anointers in the great plague of Milan‘, a scene from Alessandro Manzoni’s The Betrothed. Wellcome Collection. Public Domain.

What Makes Good Historical Fiction?

The best historical novels infer aspects of lives of which no trace remains. George Garnett starts awarding grades.

Statue of Euripides in the Vatican. Photograph by James Anderson, 1859. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Public Domain.

Euripides’ Lost Plays

One of Greek tragedy’s ‘big names’, Euripides survives largely in scraps and fragments. What can 78 new lines from Ino and Polyidus reveal?

‘Dali Atomicus’, surrealist Salvador Dalí in mid-air, by Philippe Halsman, 1948. Library of Congress. Public Domain.

How Did the First World War Change the Arts?

Surrealism – as formulated in André Breton’s manifesto a century ago in October 1924 – is regarded as one of the First World War’s artistic legacies. What are the others?

The Vrouw Maria, based on descriptions by the divers who found the ship.

The Wreck of the Vrouw Maria

On 9 October 1771 masterpieces of Dutch art destined for Catherine the Great sank with the Vrouw Maria off the coast of Finland.

A police officer checks the ID of three members of the Ku Klux Klan in Panorama City, California, 18 September 1966. University of California, Los Angeles. Library. Department of Special Collections (CC BY 4.0).

‘A Great Disorder’ by Richard Slotkin review

In A Great Disorder: National Myth and the Battle for America, Richard Slotkin attempts to untangle the stories that the US tells itself about race, colonialism and the Civil War. Is it a lost cause?

Artisans’ Dwellings, Petticoat Square, London, by William Haywood, 19th century. Bridgeman Images.

Solving the Victorian Housing Crisis

The acute housing crisis of mid-Victorian Britain generated stormy opinions about the nature of state intervention and the need for ‘wholesome despotism’.

King Mongkut of Siam, by John Thomson, 1865. Wellcome Collection. Public Domain.

Death of the King of Siam

On 1 October 1868 King Mongkut – who reigned as Rama IV – passed away having trod a delicate course to keep Thailand free of European empires.

The assasination of George Villiers, the duke of Buckingham, and favourite to King James IV and I, by Romeyn de Hooghe, 1699. Herzog August Library. Public Domain.

‘The Scapegoat’ by Lucy Hughes-Hallett review

The Scapegoat: The Brilliant Brief Life of the Duke of Buckingham by Lucy Hughes-Hallett picks through the fragments of George Villiers, James VI & I’s favourite mistake.