History Matters

In 13th-century England excommunication was akin to spiritual leprosy. How did it work?

In the 1970s and 1980s Wimpy faced off with McDonald’s in a battle over what it meant to eat British.

European intelligence agencies assisted Mossad’s Wrath of God assassination campaign, while their governments condemned them.

For the Victorians and Edwardians, the late British summer was a time of sun, sand – and sea serpents.

A routine Native American cattle round-up at the US-Mexico border in 1898 became an international incident.

The wine trade in medieval Tunis was lucrative, but it caused a moral quandary for the ruling Hafsids.

Life at sea was hard. An early modern ship’s surgeon had to treat not just broken bones but distress and trauma. 

Malibu’s 1960s Beauty Farm aimed to get a new generation of teenagers marriage-ready

How should we see the natural world? For Descartes it was a mechanism, but a wondrous one.

Britain’s first book-of-the-month club – the Book Society – brought reading to a vast new audience. But not without some controversy.