The Tree Hunters is, like Pakenham’s earlier books, beautifully written and enjoyable to read. It radiates pleasure in its ...

Ocean: A History of the Atlantic Before Columbus by John Haywood and Tracks on the Ocean: A History of Trailblazing, Maps and ...

As so often in study of the past, continuing to ask the question matters more than agreeing upon an answer. Buildings made of ...

Why are you a historian of the Atlantic World? The Atlantic World is so vast and diverse; I’ll never run out of places and peoples to study. Marcus Rediker’s The Slave Ship: A Human History, as it ...

In 1941, down a narrow street in Rochdale was a small dark shop, visited by women with a very specific and urgent requirement. The proprietor was a ‘deep-bosomed’ lady in her sixties, overly made up ...

In the aftermath of the First World War, a quarter of a century before the Nuremberg and Tokyo war crimes trials, Britain, France, and other Allied or Entente powers conducted a bold experiment in ...

Disputing Disaster is a book about the First World War’s origins and causes, not – as its title suggests – the war itself. It discusses six historians who have written on a century-old debate that has ...

Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity by Diarmaid MacCulloch reminds us that when it comes to sexuality and gender, scripture is often contradictory. The Bible was always too ...

The character of Dr. Struensee, firstly Court Physician of Denmark, then minister and dictator, is perhaps the strangest and the most perplexing in the whole history of European dictators. Historians ...

Kashmir, a small valley in the Himalayas, plays an outsized role in the national imaginations of both India and Pakistan. Formed by the river Jhelum and its tributaries, and measuring a mere 89 by 25 ...

In the summer of A.D.66 the priests of the great Temple of Yahweh at Jerusalem suddenly refused to offer the daily sacrifice for the wellbeing of the Emperor and people of Rome. These sacrifices had ...