If the present, with its conflicts and uncertainties, is impossible to know, ask Italo Calvino, how can we hope to understand ...

By the late 19th century the relationship between art and Italy felt consigned to history. On 30 April 1895 creativity and ...

E dith-Matilda or Matilda II of England is best remembered as ‘Good Queen Maud’, the wife of Henry I and patron of the 12th ...

The Long Death of Adolf Hitler: An Investigative History by Caroline Sharples explores the public fascination with the ...

Waning Crescent: The Rise and Fall of Global Islam by Faisal Devji charts how colonialism and nationalism propelled the ...

Although the reception was not always warm, the English East India Company made several attempts to trade in Japan in the ...

Manga’s First Century: How Creators and Fans Made Japanese Comics, 1905-1989 by Andrea Horbinski reveals the colourful ...

One of the first victims of the Siege of Leningrad was Betty. She had arrived in the city in 1911 and quickly established herself as an important part of her community. On 8 September 1941 – just a ...

The first Europeans known to have climbed Table Mountain were Portuguese seamen under Antonio de Saldanha, whose ships were part of a fleet on its way to India in 1503. They had a fracas with the ...

A guide to the key moments in the history of the Crusades.

British servants on the Grand Tour, the afterlife of the Tyndale Bible, Scotland’s unmarried mothers, the fall of Jerusalem, African princes in the age of slavery, and more. Plus: reviews, opinion, ...

Vladimir Nabokov called Gogol ‘the strangest prose-poet Russia ever produced’. Born in a village in the Poltava district of the Ukraine to a family of minor gentry, he grew up in the Ukrainian ...