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Renaissance beauty tips
From snail-slime face cream to poisonous makeup, our podcast editor ELLIE CAWTHORNE discusses a recent episode on creative 16th-century beauty regimes
Follow the money
JANE HUMPHRIES reviews a wide-ranging but very readable study of the changing tides of global economics from the Great Depression to the present day
How life returned to the streets of Pompeii
With a new BBC TV series about Pompeii in the offing, Sophie Hay looks back 100 years to a dig that transformed our understanding of daily life on the city's streets
15 minute cities: 30 years in the making
UN's climate narrative reveals disturbing goals
Did they really have to fight to the finish?
From 1914, powerful voices called for the First World War to end in a negotiated compromise. Why were they ignored?
Narrative thread
CHRISTIENNA FRYAR is enthralled by the story of three enslaved women told by one simple artefact
How bias begins
ALEXANDER WATSON commends a powerful examination of the portrayals of Roma people in Europe through the centuries
Dead reckoning
JAMES LIN is impressed by a scholarly but readable look at what the tombs of ancient Chinese people reveal about past and contemporary beliefs and culture
ΚΕΕΡ CALM AND IGNORE THE ARMADA
What did English merchants and mariners do when a Spanish invasion fleet menaced the south coast in 1588? As Robert Blackmore reveals, they boarded their ships and carried on trading
Scotland's greatest victory
The image of plucky warriors sending a cocksure English army into flight has secured Bannockburn's status in the annals of Scottish history. Helen Carr chronicles the 1314 clash that transformed the balance of power between two warring nations
NORTHERN POWERHOUSE
During its turbulent four-century history, the kingdom of Northumbria clashed with Pictish warriors, Welsh kings and Viking raiders. Fiona Edmonds tells the story of an ambitious realm that changed the face of early medieval Britain
France in the dock
RICHARD J EVANS applauds a vivid account of the final days of the collaborationist French Vichy regime, and of the trial of its leader, Marshal Philippe Pétain
Walter Tull 1888-1918
MY HISTORY HERO
TOKYO IN RUINS
In 1923, a violent earthquake razed Japan's bustling imperial capital and killed more than 100,000 people. Christopher Harding explores the aftermath of the disaster - and its pivotal cultural and physical legacy
"In an inclusive public culture, Blake's is a great, passionate human voice"
PUTTING AWAY THE CAMPING GEAR AFTER THIS year's Glastonbury Festival, I found myself reflecting on the idea of alternative cultures. Since its origins, Glastonbury has always been political, and hosts a huge number of side discussions, concerts and seminars. It still gives money to Greenpeace, WaterAid and Oxfam, in addition to a host of local charities. As a festival of music and arts, it plays an important part in public discourse in these deeply polarised times - when, for instance, a journalist from The Times recently argued that the humanities are a waste of effort.
"Britain's first black editor achieved so much in such a short life"
WHEN I RECENTLY CAME ACROSS THE MAN considered Britain's first black editor, I was surprised that I had never before heard his name. Samuel Jules Celestine Edwards was born in Dominica, the youngest of 10 children, near the end of the 1850s. In 1870 he travelled to North America and then, some seven years later, to Edinburgh, where he worked as a labourer. He later spent time in Sunderland, where he reconnected with his Christian faith, practising as a Methodist, and became a vocal proponent of temperance.
Is history under threat at the UK's universities?
Universities around Britain have announced staffing cuts to history departments in recent months, citing falling admissions and funding shortages. President of the Royal Historical Society EMMA GRIFFIN spoke to Matt Elton about the causes of the crisis
"The idea that political projects such as nation-making can ever be totally successful is a misconception"
Joya Chatterji talks to Matt Elton about her book charting the tumultuous course of south Asia's 20th-century, including the violence that followed the creation of three new countries after the withdrawal of the British empire
Best defence
JON WILSON is swept up by a look at how diverse peoples worldwide reacted to British efforts to trade with, conquer, colonise and dominate their homelands
PEACE! (AT THE POINT OF A SWORD)
Pax Romana brought stability and prosperity to Rome's vast empire. Yet, writes Tom Holland, behind the dazzling new cities and teeming sea lanes lay the threat of lethal, irresistible violence
THE KING OF FOLLY
In 1323, Roger Mortimer pulled off an audacious escape from the Tower of London before ejecting Edward II from the English throne. But, writes Paul Dryburgh, the rebel baron's designs on power were undone by his own big head
Sidi Mubarak Bombay Unsung African adventurer
Stolen from his village as a boy, enslaved and trafficked to a distant land, the intrepid and big-hearted Sidi Mubarak Bombay returned to travel across his home continent on pioneering expeditions. CANDICE MILLARD introduces a little-known but exceptional explorer
FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM
The civil rights movement saw hundreds of thousands of Americans rallying to the cause of racial equality. Rhiannon Davies has spoken to several historians of the campaign for a new podcast series. Here she revisits five key moments in the struggle
Why we're still living in the age of the witch hunt
The gruesome mass executions of the early modern era may have abated, but that doesn't mean the persecution of so-called witches has come to an end
City on the brink of battle
Hidden away in an unassuming shopping centre lies a doorway to the distant past. EMILY BRIFFETT steps back in time to discover the contested world of Anglo-Saxon Winchester
America rediscovered
CAROLINE DODDS PENNOCK acclaims an insightful exploration of the history of North America's Indigenous peoples since the era of European colonisation
THE GREATEST PHARAOH?
Ramesses II was a genius in the art of self-promotion. Epic palaces, jaw-dropping temples and sycophantic scribes all projected his brilliance. But, asks Toby Wilkinson, do the achievements of Egypt’s ‘king of kings’ truly justify the hype?
The children's war on slavery
They boycotted sugar, signed petitions and played abolitionist board games. Ryan Hanley and Kathryn Gleadle introduce the young people who took a stand against the slave trade in Georgian Britain
The forgotten history of Windrush
The famous voyage of the Empire Windrush from Jamaica to Britain 75 years ago was the product of a tumultuous century in Britain's relationship with the Caribbean. Christienna Fryar reveals how a region was transformed following emancipation
"These men are a key part of our story. Their portrait should be seen"
WHEN THE RENOWNED ANGLO-HUNGARIAN painter Philip de László died in 1937, an unusual double portrait was found in his private collection