European history

Where does brave, stubborn Hungary stand today?

4 June 2022 9:00 am

‘Deplorable,’ wrote the historian Denis Sinor in 1958 about the state of Hungarian historiography in English. ‘Not only are the…

Were the Ottoman Turks as European as they thought themselves?

20 November 2021 9:00 am

This is the best of times to be writing history, since so much of what has been taken for granted,…

Dark days in the Balkans: life under Enver Hoxha and beyond

6 November 2021 9:00 am

For many in the West, Albania remains as remote and shadowy as the fictional Syldavia of the Tintin comics. The…

Migration in Europe is the ripple effect of the second world war

17 August 2019 9:00 am

Two words may pique the reader’s interest on the cover of this timely, panoramic history of Europe by the distinguished…

‘Spanish troops loot a village in Flanders during the Thirty Years War’, by Sebastian Vrancx

Simplicius Simplicissimus and the horrors of the Thirty Years’ War

31 March 2018 9:00 am

On 23 May 1618, Bohemian Protestants pushed two Catholic governors and their secretary through the windows of Prague Castle, in…

Plotinus and Michel de Montaigne are included in George Steiner’s broad survey. His argument that we should elevate the pursuit of disinterested knowledge over the making of money is a familar one since classical times

From Plotinus to Heidegger: a history of European thought in 48 pages

18 April 2015 9:00 am

T.S. Eliot liked to recall the time he was recognised by his London taxi driver. Surprised, he told the cabbie…