The question matters greatly when assessing Tom McTague’s Between the Waves: The Hidden History of a Very British Revolution, ...

Do you know what happened in Lyon in AD 177? Or in Milan in 1300? Or in Baroda in 1825? You probably don’t, but you shouldn’t worry: few do. Whatever happened, it was, by ordinary standards, something ...

Good history opens up sightlines not only to the past but to the present as well. It allows us to see aspects of our current circumstance as the product of developments that are deeper and richer than ...

It shames me to admit that I came somewhat late to Henry James. In my adolescence I read The Turn of the Screw and, being young, largely missed the sly and appalling ambiguities of this ‘trap for the ...

If I want to walk along the river near where I live, I have to cross one of the busiest roads in west London. The only access is via an underpass, an enclosed tunnel where a female friend of mine was ...

For my money, there is no more captivating view in all Italy than the vast panorama of the harbour of Syracuse, framed by its majestic, honey-coloured Baroque buildings. The city’s origins go back to ...

There is, plainly, no logic in the unfolding of time.’ Pankaj Mishra makes this sceptical observation in order to undermine the theories of history that have inspired Western thinkers and leaders over ...

When I think of the parish priests I know who are not remotely misogynistic, homophobic or paedophilic, feel faintly embarrassed by the short-sleeved missionaries of the past, minister tirelessly to ...

Perhaps the central problem with novels about the rock business (such as David Mitchell’s recent Utopia Avenue and Nick Hornby’s Juliet, Naked) is that they end up dealing in clichés. Alan Warner is ...

Historians of science have a guilty secret: we don’t particularly enjoy writing about those deemed singular geniuses. The public – or at least publishers – want stories of revolutionaries who stood ...

In the Book of Judges, the people of Gilead identify their Ephraimite enemies on the banks of the Jordan by demanding they say ‘shibboleth’, the Hebrew word for ‘stream’. If the captive says ...

In late 2022, at the G20 summit held at a balmy resort in Bali, Indonesia, the prime minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, bumped into the supreme leader of China, Xi Jinping. The encounter, which was ...