Disputing Disaster is a book about the First World War’s origins and causes, not – as its title suggests – the war itself. It discusses six historians who have written on a century-old debate that has ...

The sound of the Houses of Parliament clock chiming the hour signifies a daily ritual for many a radio listener. Sited in St Stephen's Tower, the clock is better known as Big Ben - though the name ...

Marcus Rediker’s The Slave Ship: A Human History, as it pushed me to study the trans-Atlantic slave trade from the bottom up.

The composer of the Daphnis and Chloe ballet, the ever-popular Bolero, the Pavane for a Dead Infanta and a piano concerto for the left hand among many admired works was 62 when he died. From his ...

A brilliant inventor and engineer, William George Armstrong was also an armaments magnate, a considerate and generous man who manufactured killing machinery in large quantitities. Born in 1810, the ...

The Renaissance came later to Prague than to Venice, Flanders, or Rome. But it was no less transformative when it did. In the 16th century Prague became a place where empires converged and cultures ...

In 1941, down a narrow street in Rochdale was a small dark shop, visited by women with a very specific and urgent requirement. The proprietor was a ‘deep-bosomed’ lady in her sixties, overly made up ...

Kashmir, a small valley in the Himalayas, plays an outsized role in the national imaginations of both India and Pakistan. Formed by the river Jhelum and its tributaries, and measuring a mere 89 by 25 ...