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When Nostalgia Was Deadly

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In 1688 a young Swiss milkmaid clambered over a rocky outcrop. She was halfway up an...
In 1688 a young Swiss milkmaid clambered over a rocky outcrop. She was halfway up an Alpine slope when she slipped and tumbled down several feet. Seriously injured, she was carried away to hospital in the nearby town where she lay, unconscious, for days. Physicians plied her with remedies and performed surgeries, an...
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Original Pirate Material

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Shortly before midday on Easter Saturday 28 March 1964, the first medium wave broadcasts were heard...
Shortly before midday on Easter Saturday 28 March 1964, the first medium wave broadcasts were heard from the offshore pirate station Radio Caroline. Based on a converted ferry moored just outside UK territorial waters, Radio Caroline was the brainchild of Dublin-born Ronan O’Rahilly. His father Aodogán owned the por...
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William Adams: English Advisor to the Shogun

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In 1600 a Dutch galleon arrived on the shores of a small fief on Kyushu, the...
In 1600 a Dutch galleon arrived on the shores of a small fief on Kyushu, the westernmost of Japan’s four main islands. It was the first Dutch ship to reach Japan. Among the crew was an English navigator, William Adams, who managed to gain the trust of Tokugawa Ieyasu, a powerful warlord who became a shogun (the mili...
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Political Graffiti in Georgian Britain

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In December 1731 an anonymous author was preparing for the publication of the third edition of...
In December 1731 an anonymous author was preparing for the publication of the third edition of an odd little book that had already taken Britain by storm. The Merry thought, or Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany was a collection of graffiti – line after line transcribed, first from London and, by the third editio...
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'Sparta and the Commemoration of War' and 'The Killing Ground' Review

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Two very different volumes, Sparta and the Commemoration of War and The Killing Ground: A Biography...
Two very different volumes, Sparta and the Commemoration of War and The Killing Ground: A Biography of Thermopylae, grapple with the myth of Sparta. These are books of very different kinds, not exactly chalk and cheese, but certainly apples and oranges. All three authors are military historians, if of dissimilar str...
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Beware the Lides of March

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March is the month which proverbially ‘comes in like a lion and goes out like a...
March is the month which proverbially ‘comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb’. That proverb, which dates back to the 17th century, is just one of many traditional sayings about the tempestuous nature of this month’s weather. This stormy month, part winter and part spring, has been called ‘March many-weathers...
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Measuring the Shape of the Earth

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In 1726 Voltaire faced a not very difficult choice: imprisonment without trial in the Bastille, or...
In 1726 Voltaire faced a not very difficult choice: imprisonment without trial in the Bastille, or exile in England. After sailing across the Channel, he landed in another universe. Before leaving France, he declared, he had lived in a world that was full – but as soon as he arrived in England, he found one that was...
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What Do We Get Wrong About the Byzantine Empire?

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Anthony Kaldellis is author of The New Roman Empire: A History of Byzantium (Oxford University Press,...
Anthony Kaldellis is author of The New Roman Empire: A History of Byzantium (Oxford University Press, 2024) The first thing we get wrong is that we use made-up terms. ‘Byzantium’ and ‘the Byzantines’ were invented by western European scholars to deny the identity of this state and its people, who were Roman, no less...
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Ancient Rome's Failed Building Projects

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Troubled construction projects are perennially in the news. When looking for historical parallels of grand and...
Troubled construction projects are perennially in the news. When looking for historical parallels of grand and wasteful infrastructure schemes, journalists and political commentators often reach for absurdities and failures that were occasionally undertaken by 20th-century communist regimes. But go back further and ...
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The End of Britain's Weeks-Long General Elections

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‘When it comes to the point’, wrote Roy Jenkins, ‘one of the clearest prerogatives of a...
‘When it comes to the point’, wrote Roy Jenkins, ‘one of the clearest prerogatives of a Prime Minister is that of choosing the date of an election.’ Prime ministers agonise over the decision. But before 1918, the government only set the date of dissolution: the responsibility for choosing the nomination and polling ...
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Jackie Coogan and the fall of Hollywood's child stars

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Charlie Chaplin’s first full-length feature film, The Kid (1921), remains one of the great masterpieces of...
Charlie Chaplin’s first full-length feature film, The Kid (1921), remains one of the great masterpieces of silent cinema. It was an ambitious, risky project; industry professionals were cynical about his ambition to combine heartfelt pathos with slapstick comedy. Chaplin, however, was undeterred and the film became ...
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How French Was Medieval England?

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Maria Graham and the Valparaíso Earthquake

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‘Small Earthquake in Chile, Not many dead.’ The journalist Claud Cockburn supposedly won a prize for...
‘Small Earthquake in Chile, Not many dead.’ The journalist Claud Cockburn supposedly won a prize for dreaming up this notoriously dull newspaper headline, although it seems never to have been used. In contrast, the very real Valparaiso earthquake of 19 November 1822 was immensely newsworthy: it killed or injured aro...
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'With Her Own Hair': A Victorian Prisoner's Art

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A Deptford woman named Annie Parker sat in a dank, cold cell in Kent’s Maidstone Gaol...
A Deptford woman named Annie Parker sat in a dank, cold cell in Kent’s Maidstone Gaol in 1879. Jailed for drunkenness, this was not her first time behind prison bars; of the past 365 days she had spent 350 in prison and, by the time of her death six years later, had been arrested for drunkenness and other associated...
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Queen Victoria's Stalker

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In autumn 1837 Captain Jonathan Childe, an officer in the 12th Lancers, became convinced that the...
In autumn 1837 Captain Jonathan Childe, an officer in the 12th Lancers, became convinced that the young Queen Victoria had become romantically attached to him. That a handsome, well-born man might have caught the queen’s eye was not impossible. She was very young, of an amorous nature and impressed by manly men. Ins...
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How to Revive Wassailing

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When I give talks about the medieval festival year, one of the questions people most often...
When I give talks about the medieval festival year, one of the questions people most often ask me is ‘are there any medieval traditions you think we should revive?’ I’m never quite sure how to answer. Reviving old traditions can be a lot of fun, but it’s also a tricky issue; there’s a danger of artificiality, twee a...
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Medieval Icelandic Feasts

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In the Icelandic sagas communal feasting served as cornerstone of celebration. A thousand years on, these...
In the Icelandic sagas communal feasting served as cornerstone of celebration. A thousand years on, these cautionary tales still offer sage advice for the Yule festivities. Blessed be the givers! A guest has come in,where is he going to sit?He’s in great haste, the one who by the log-stack is going to try his luck.
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