The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
Dr. Steven Parissien’s latest retelling of history through architecture, Building Britannia: A History of Britain in Twenty-Five Buildings, begins with Maiden Castle in Dorset, which dates from around 600 BC. In the words of John Cooper Powys, this resembles ‘the...
Welcome, Steven, to Aspects of History. What was it that first led you into the study of architecture and cultural history? Which came first? I was always fascinated by British history and British architecture from my earliest years, though I’m not sure why: no-one in...
How did the Industrial Revolution come about? And why did it start in Britain? Professor Edmond Smith examines these fundamental questions in compelling fashion, from the founding of the Royal Society in 1660 to the onset of imperial glory at the turn of the 19th...
The Stories Old Towns Tell: A Journey through the Cities at the Heart of Europe This is in many ways a book about the history which history forgot. In it, the cities of central and eastern Europe come alive with a cornucopia of intriguing facts and fascinating...
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...
It is generally accepted that the European Renaissance began in Italy. However, as this developed south of the Alps a historical transformation of similar magnitude began taking place in northern Europe. This ‘Other Renaissance’ was initially centred on the city of...
Paul, your book was published 15 years ago to great acclaim. Why did you write it, after all it’s the only book you’ve written on the Napoleonic period. First and foremost I wrote Napoleon in Egypt because it was such an gripping story - one which included everything...
The Other Renaissance with Paul Strathern | RSS.com
Cities come and go, some destroyed by humanity, others by nature, others simply abandoned. Several decades ago, I happened upon an example of the last kind, in India. The redstone city was deserted, its wide empty paved streets extending into the distance towards the...
Early in Richard Cohen’s excellent Making History he quotes his distinguished predecessor, the late John Burrow: ‘Almost all historians … have some characteristic weakness … It is often the source of their most interesting writing’. Cohen’s weaknesses are for story,...
