David Abulafia

The culture wars have crept into Oxbridge admissions

14 May 2022 9:00 am

The negative discrimination of Oxbridge admissions

Bitter harvest – how Ukraine’s wheat has always been coveted

16 April 2022 9:00 am

Publishers love books with ambitious subtitles such as ‘How Bubblegum Made the Modern World’, and this one’s, about American wheat…

Were old children’s history books racist?

5 March 2022 9:00 am

Are children’s history books racist?

Masters of the opium trade: the fabulous wealth of the Sassoons

19 February 2022 9:00 am

David Abulafia admires the shrewdness, generosity and panache of the Sassoons over many generations

Why does Priyamvada Gopal find ‘eloquence’ troubling?

13 January 2022 6:15 pm

Why should anyone feel insulted when they are described as ‘eloquent’? Priyamvada Gopal, professor of post-colonial studies at Cambridge University, felt…

Rhodes, Columbus and the next heritage battle

17 October 2021 5:31 pm

On 12 October this year, Columbus Day, a statue of the Italian in Belgrave Square was vandalised by activists from…

What’s behind Cambridge’s anonymous reporting system?

10 July 2021 9:00 am

What’s behind Cambridge’s anonymous reporting system?

University challenge: conservatives are now the radicals on campus

3 April 2021 9:00 am

Conservatives are now the radicals on campus

The many uses of frankincense and myrrh

19 December 2020 9:00 am

‘And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down,…

No, racism isn't a 'creation of white people'

2 September 2020 4:00 pm

I remember that, as a small child, I was told not to talk when my father took me inside the…

We should build more memorials to controversial people

27 June 2020 9:00 am

It is hard to find benign examples of imperialism