Babylon
‘If you steal this book I’ll beat your brains out’
Curses on the book thief from Latin and Old English sources range from the venomous to the sadistic to the mind-twistingly gruesome
Conrad Black adheres firmly to the ‘great man’ view of history
The movers and shakers of Volume I of his projected history of the world are Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and Hannibal rather than any socio-economic forces
![Ivory plaque of a lioness mauling a man, ivory, gold, cornelian, lapis lazuli, Nimrud, 900 BC–700 BC. [© The Trustees of the British Museum]](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/lioness_plaque.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
The Assyrians of Ashurbanipal’s time were just as into pillage and destruction as Isis
The Assyrians placed sculptures of winged human-headed bulls (lamassus) at the entrances to their capital at Nineveh, in modern Mosul,…
What the NHS does now, Babylon did first
Financial constraints combined with a shortage of staff have brought the NHS to a situation so desperate that it is…
The journey of Adam and Eve
Trying to reconcile a belief in the literal truth of the Bible with the facts of the world as we…
Why do men grow beards?
The ocean that Christopher Oldstone-Moore has set out to chart is as broad as it is shallow: what it has…
So long, Scandinavia. Bonjour, Benelux!
So long, Scandinavia. Bonjour, Benelux! BBC4, your subtitle-friendly channel, has filled the hole left by Nordic-noir The Bridge with Belgian…
Ancient and modern: Herodotus on 111
The NHS 111 line, designed to deal with problems that do not count as emergencies, is in financial and organisational…
