Britain

Wendy Moore catches a rare glimpse of a medical collection that includes tonsil guillotines and implements for trepanning.

Bartitsu – rather than Baritsu – was a hybrid martial art that flourished in fin de siècle London. As an amateur boxer, Arthur Conan Doyle was fascinated.

Patricia Fara recounts the moving story of a gifted contemporary of Isaac Newton who came to symbolise the frustrations of generations of female scientists denied the chance to fulfil their talents.

R. E. Foster examines the career of Pitt the Younger.

Janet Copeland introduces one of the most important feminist figures in twentieth-century history.

David Hipshon regrets the degree to which our history syllabuses have censored the roles of British heroes.

In 1947, as Zionist insurgents wreaked havoc, British special forces in Palestine adopted counterinsurgency tactics that attracted worldwide condemnation. David Cesarani discusses a scandal whose ramifications persist to this day.

Richard Cavendish remembers the birth of Birth of the First Earl of Clarendon on February 18, 1609. 

Byron’s love affair with bare-knuckle boxing was shared by many of his fellow Romantics, who celebrated this most brutal of sports in verse. John Strachan examines an unlikely match.

Richard Willis charts how order was brought to the medical profession by the foundation of the General Medical Council 150 years ago.