History
A toast to Victorian Britain
Across oceans and continents, less favoured nations produce more history than they can consume. In these islands, the English —…
The ancient problem of unscrupulous ‘doctors’
Yet again ‘doctors’ with no qualifications have been found advertising dodgy but expensive products and treatments, in this case, injections…
Claudius, Messalina and how not to choose political advisers
The Prime Minister has been having some trouble with his inner circle of advisers. Tacitus supplies fine examples of how…
The irresistible lure of classified ads
The seduction of back-page ads
The ancients knew they couldn’t turn back time
The singer Cher, now 75, has announced that, because she refuses to appear old, she is not going to allow…
Boris wouldn’t be the first to be brought down by a party
Whatever the result of Sue Gray’s report on ‘gatherings’ in Downing Street, there is a political lesson to be learned:…
Our growing unwillingness to understand the past
I was recently reading the works of the 17th-century antiquary John Aubrey, who at one point mentions a ghost craze…
Make History Great Again!
Why don’t today’s children know more about history? In an age when information has never been easier to access, it’s…
Why has medicine been so slow to improve over the centuries?
Medicine was founded by Hippocrates in the 5th century BC. Doctors continued to study the Hippocratic texts into the 19th…
Can the fiasco of the Dieppe Raid really be excused?
In my mother’s final days we had a long conversation about the second world war. I asked if she’d ever…
Use it or lose it: has the public library had its day?
I write this in a garret a few doors down from the public library in Muswell Hill, north London. It…
The Globe, Plato and the corrupting force of art
The Globe theatre’s project to ‘decolonise’ Shakespeare, as if that would make plays like The Tempest ‘acceptable’ to them and…
Twitter has taken the place of the ancient curse-tablet
Twitter and other easily accessible means of online communication have encouraged the public to believe that Their Voice Will Be…
Rhodes, Columbus and the next heritage battle
On 12 October this year, Columbus Day, a statue of the Italian in Belgrave Square was vandalised by activists from…
What James Bond and Aristophanes have in common
So James Bond is back, doing exactly what he always does, inviting the audience into a fantasy world for the…
No, America couldn’t have been Canada
What if William Howe, the dithering British commander, hadn’t let the American army escape in the Battle of Long Island…
Most people who call themselves Caucasian know nothing about the Caucasus
A magnificent new history of the Caucasus earns Peter Frankopan’s highest praise
How the ancients showed their true colours
In the 18th century, art historians’ admiration for the beauty of white-ish ancient Greek marble statuary led people to draw…
My roots burnt with Greece
On 11 March this year my father passed away from prostate cancer after several weeks in a hospital in central…
Our need to get drunk in company may be innate
It was once a favourite theory of optimistic drunkards that a suitably ‘moderate’ level of alcohol consumption provided covert health…
The disgraceful decision to remove Liverpool’s heritage status
Unesco has cancelled the ‘World Heritage Status’ of the Necropolis at Memphis and the Giza Pyramid because a Radisson Blu…
How the ancients kept people behaving responsibly
The Prime Minister is urging citizens not to throw caution to the winds when lockdown ends on 19 July but…
Tacitus and the hypocrisy of cancel culture
The delicious hypocrisy at the heart of today’s cancel fraternity is that it is strongly opposed to censorship. Romans grappled…
Not so dryasdust: how 18th-century antiquarians proved the first ‘modern’ historians
Antiquaries have had a bad press. If mentioned at all today, they are often derided as reclusive pedants poring over…
Journey to the end of the world: the full horror of the Belgica’s Antarctic expedition
The epic story of the Antarctic voyage of the Belgica (1897-9) has all the ingredients of a truly glorious misadventure:…
