The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
Between the end of the Renaissance and the start of the Enlightenment, Europe lived through an era known as the Age of Reason. This was a period which saw widespread advances in the arts and sciences. Artists such as Caravaggio, Rembrandt and Van Dyk flourished across...
Hugh, the Fairfax name is most well-known because of the 3rd Lord, Sir Thomas (1612 – 1671), but what are the origins of the family? The Fairfax family is first heard of in the 12th Century with Henry owning land at Askham near York. Like many people in the north of...
If a hero is a person who is greatly admired for their courage, outstanding achievements or noble qualities, then the phrase “folk hero” has a slightly different emphasis. A folk hero is someone who is popular with and respected particularly by the ordinary people....
The Fairfax family occupies a unique and largely forgotten place in the story of America, as the only members of the House of Lords - the Peerage - to have been long-time residents of the United States for over 150 years. First as colonialists and then as citizens of...
Don’t Mention the War: The Start of Civil War in England The tragedy of the Civil War is explored by the author of a new biography of Charles I. The devastating civil wars of the 17th century tore Great Britain’s three kingdoms apart. They were wars ‘without an...
Few other outlaw groups in history have left such an enduring legacy as the seafaring pirates of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In The Pirate Menace, Angus Konstam explores how, when, why, and where the world’s most infamous (and many lesser known) pirates...
When one looks at the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland under Oliver Cromwell in August 1658, would it have been fanciful to imagine a Republic for the foreseeable future, yet within two years the Stuarts were back on the throne? By August 1658, the...
As a former policewoman, Blessin Adams is well aware of the human cost of murder. In Great and Horrible News, this moving nonfiction study, she investigates the crimes that shook Tudor and Stuart England. In doing so, she approaches her cases forensically: and what a...
The Slipperiness of History I was really interested to read recently that the coded letters of Mary Queen of Scots have been deciphered by modern computer scientists and decoders. Undoubtedly this will give us hitherto unknown insights into what we know about her and...
In preparation for my meeting with Robert Harris (of course I’d read his latest novel, Act of Oblivion), I read a number of interviews and listened to his Desert Island Discs with Kirsty Young. 12 years old now, it is a fascinating and enlightening episode, and gave...
