Literature

On the 100th anniversary of its publication, James Joyce’s Ulysses is widely regarded as a groundbreaking work of fiction, but can literature have any impact outside the confines of culture? 

The author of the quaint, but much-loved Ladybird books was also a radical playwright.

In the 1950s Mills & Boon’s medical romances helped make the NHS more appealing to an ambivalent British public. 

Throughout the centuries countless libraries and carefully curated book collections have been dispersed, destroyed or lost. 

Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, was obsessed with falconry. This led him to write a truly revolutionary book on the subject.

Britain’s obscenity trials and censorship laws.

Female explorers of the 19th century demolished Victorian notions of stay-at-home women. But why were they so vehemently anti-feminist? The case of Mary Wollstonecraft may hold the answer. 

The industry of fake charters, from the tenth century, to its zenith two centuries later.

What sort of society produced Shakespeare?