‘Impossible Monsters’ by Michael Taylor review
Impossible Monsters: Dinosaurs, Darwin and the War between Science and Religion by Michael Taylor revels in the tangles of Victorian thought.
Volume 74 Issue 4 April 2024
‘Deterring Armageddon’ by Peter Apps and ‘NATO’ by Sten Rynning review
As Deterring Armageddon: A Biography of NATO and NATO: From Cold War to Ukraine, a History of the World’s Most Powerful Alliance make clear, at almost every point in the last 75 years the alliance's future has looked uncertain.
Sabbatai Sevi: The Lost Messiah
In the 17th century news spread that the Jewish messiah had finally arrived. Within a year he had converted to Islam. Who was he, and what had happened?
Challenging the ‘Ugliness’ of Anne of Cleves
Anne of Cleves became known to posterity as the ‘Flanders Mare’ and Henry VIII’s ‘ugly wife’, thanks to disparaging descriptions by ambassadors and diplomats. What motivated them?
William Adams: English Adviser to the Shogun
How an English navigator became one of the shogun’s most trusted advisers.
Northern Ireland’s Sex Scandal that Wasn’t
When four men were accused of an act of ‘gross indecency’ in 1950s Belfast, just three were put on trial. Despite efforts by the unionist government to protect a member of a prominent local family, not everyone was willing to be complicit in a cover-up.
The US Treasury’s Money Laundering Machine
The term ‘money laundering’ is often associated with mobsters, drug lords and morally dubious executives. But the expression’s first use was far less lawless.
The Capetians: Medieval France’s Greatest Dynasty
Dogged by rumours of stolen thrones and treachery, the Capetians were nonetheless one of the most successful dynasties of the medieval West.
‘Remembering Peasants’ by Patrick Joyce review
Remembering Peasants: A Personal History of a Vanished World by Patrick Joyce is a tender study of European rural life. But is this lost past closer than we think?
Spycraft and the Glorious Revolution
In the era of the early modern ‘secret state’, two notorious brothers set up an elaborate intelligence network, managing a vast array of spies and informers watchful for Jacobite plots against Britain.