Recently published

On 22 September 1598, Elizabethan actor Gabriel Spencer settled his creative differences with playwright Ben Jonson with a duel.

As new crimes are committed, new laws must be written to punish them. When it comes to crimes committed by states like Putin’s Russia, who decides?

In 1173 the Angevin empire looked set to fall, facing rebellion on all sides. Against incredible odds Henry II won a decisive victory, silencing kings, lords – and his own children.

As Jewish lapidaries were held in Nazi concentration camps, diamond sales soared in the US. Both sides saw gemstones as integral to the war effort. 

A Northern Wind: Britain 1962-65 by David Kynaston is a hyperreal account of Britain on the cusp of modernity.

Older than their Egyptian counterparts, the preserved remains of Andean peoples fascinated 19th-century Europe, leading to a ‘bone stampede’ for Inca mummies. But to what end?

The Republic of Turkey is 100 years old. Built on the ashes of an old empire, what place is there for the Ottoman past in the secular state?

What historical topic have I changed my mind on? Colonialism. I now know that it had no redeeming features.

Shadows at Noon: The South Asian Twentieth Century by Joya Chatterji is a gently revisionist account of an enduring, if ever-tottering, democracy.

How ‘lore’, a largely neglected medieval word, has found a new lease of life in fandom.