The Second World War disrupted narratives of mankind’s ‘progress’, but – as William Golding captured so vividly in Lord of the Flies – human history has always been a balancing act between enlightenment and calamity.
During the Cold War successive British governments did all they could to maintain a friendship with Tito’s Yugoslavia. Why was the communist strongman so important to Westminster?
After a long battle, Britain’s Sex Discrimination Act came into force in 1975. What did it do for women?
A Popular History of Idi Amin’s Uganda by Derek R. Peterson looks for the ordinary people who kept the regime’s wheels turning.
How to finance old age has been a problem since the inception of Britain’s welfare state. Why is pension reform so difficult?
How can historians of Tibet – a region whose history is tightly controlled by the Chinese authorities – gain access to its recent past? Comparing newspapers from either side of the Himalayas might offer a way in.
Postwar state support for agriculture in the UK has been hailed a great success, but it had unexpected consequences.
Chernobyl Children: A Transnational History of Nuclear Disaster by Melanie Arndt discovers how Soviet civil society flourished – and then faltered – in the fallout.
In November 2025 we reach 25 years of continuous human presence in space. Did reaching orbit alter the trajectory of the planet below?
El Generalísimo: Franco: Power, Violence and the Quest for Greatness by Giles Tremlett considers the making of the mediocrity at the heart of modern Spain.
