Piracy pays: how history’s greatest buccaneer got off scot-free
In 1694 London’s streets echoed with a call to the piratical life: Come all you brave boys, whose courage is…
The whole of China is in an eerie state of shutdown
Shanghai ‘Do you want me to scan your temperature?’ asks the receptionist, brandishing an infrared thermometer. Arriving at my hotel…
Fear and loathing in Jamaica: Caribbean slaves turn the whip on their masters
In the shadows of the British Enlightenment lurked the Caribbean sugar plantations. Masters routinely raped their slaves, punished minor wrongdoings…
As long as poverty and maritime trade exist, so will piracy
Western attitudes to piracy have dripped with hubris. In his classic history of 1932, Philip Gosse confidently argued that European…
Cracking jokes with Dr Johnson
I cast my Readers under two general Divisions, the Mercurial and the Saturnine. The first are the gay part of…
Ernst Jünger — reluctant captain of the Wehrmacht
Ernst Jünger, who died in 1998, aged 102, is now better known for his persona than his work. A deeply…
How do we envisage Shakespeare’s wife?
Despite his having one of the most famous names in the world, we know maddeningly little about William Shakespeare. His…
Think of five things you use daily that weren’t made in a factory
Industrial factories huddle at the very edge of our world view. Most of us have never visited one, but we…
How Raffles stole the jewel of Singapore
Accounts of the founding of the British Empire once echoed the pages of Boy’s Own, featuring visionaries, armed with a…
