Cultural

The puppet theatres of Kazakhstan combined Soviet ideals with Kazakh traditions to educate the masses.

Entrepreneur Hugh Donald McIntosh struck white gold when London’s Black and White Bar opened on 1 August 1935.

Interrail gave young Europeans the freedom of the continent in the 1970s. Five decades on, people are still taking the train.

The Literary and Philosophical Society was once ubiquitous, allowing minds to meet and views to collide. Their disappearance has left more questions than answers.

For nine days Thomas Middleton’s A Game at Chess was the greatest box office phenomenon of the English Renaissance. Then a warrant was issued for his arrest.

New books by Natasha Wheatley and Richard Cockett explain how for all its apparent anachronism the Hapsburg empire, and its capital, shaped the modern world.

Hollywood’s golden age was born of the popularity of swords and sandals on the Victorian stage.

In the 1930s several prominent Black intellectuals visited Shanghai, bringing politics, culture and anti-colonial fervour with them.