The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
In 1376, the Lords and Commons of England gathered at Westminster Palace to attend the first Parliament held in almost three years, with the intention to reform what they considered to be a corrupt government; this would later be called the ‘Good Parliament’ and would...
On 31st January 2010, Trooper Corie Mapp of The Life Guards was driving his armoured vehicle on combat operations in Afghanistan when it ran over an Improvised Explosive Device (IED). The explosion that followed caused him massive injuries. But this was not the end of...
The geoscience and archaeology joint group that we formed over a quarter century ago is committed to a single goal: applying noninvasive geoscience subsurface mapping and exploration as a prerequisite for every invasive archaeological excavation. Richard Freund Since...
The White Ship A very long time ago, when I started working as a reporter for NBC News in the US, a veteran colleague spotted my general cluelessness. He kindly took me aside and gave me this nugget of golden advice: ‘There are only three reactions you want in the...
The West African slave trade has become a staple of history teaching and popularisation. Rightly so. The triangular trade – trinkets from Europe to Africa, slaves from Africa to the Americas, plantation commodities from the Americas to Europe – was the most visceral...
When the Nightingale Sings is a novel based on the true story of Joan Curran, a Welsh physicist, and Hedy Lamarr, a Hollywood movie star whose scientific contributions changed the course of history and World War Two. Joan Curran (represented in the story as the...
It is a widely held point of view that history is usually written – or at least distorted – by the victors. The history of the war on the Eastern Front between the Red Army and Wehrmacht, in the English speaking world is almost unique in that it does not conform to...
One of the most common tropes of the First World War is the poster of a finger-pointing Lord Kitchener telling the men of Britain “your country needs you”. Thousands responded, sometimes signing up with their friends or colleagues. Later, in 1916, conscription was...
How did a failed rebel against Ancient Rome become a figure of hope for a dejected people in modern times? And how did that unlikely hero become an intrinsic part of the case for the foundation of an entire country? The man at the centre of the story is known as Bar...
The preamble to the American Declaration of Independence, drafted by Thomas Jefferson and revised by Congress, declares that all men have certain 'unalienable Rights', including 'Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness'. This was the culmination of a century of...
