Finished by the First World War and buried under the nation states that succeeded it, the Habsburg monarchy had survived for centuries despite its obvious faultlines. What held it together? At the end ...

The Queenship of Mathilda of Flanders, c.1031-1083: Embodying Conquest by Laura L. Gathagan traces the material legacy of the ...

The vast deserts of the American West posed logistical problems for the US Army. Camels offered a novel solution.

Two recent books, The Revolution to Come: A History of an Idea from Thucydides to Lenin by Dan Edelstein and Revolutions: A ...

How to read more? We might take instruction from a more leisurely age.

Josip Broz Tito was a man who demanded attention. Estranged from Moscow and wary of Washington, communist yet non-aligned, the Yugoslav president worked hard to carve a role between East and West in ...

The emirate of Granada – Islam’s last polity in Spain – was surrendered to the Catholic monarchs on 2 January 1492.

The body belonged to Charles d’Espagne, constable of France and its most powerful figure after the king, Jean II. The man ...

A brilliant inventor and engineer, William George Armstrong was also an armaments magnate, a considerate and generous man who manufactured killing machinery in large quantitities. Born in 1810, the ...

Cold War Yugoslavia, Oswald of Northumbria, the wreck of the Spanish treasure ship San José, educating the Maharaja of Travancore, understanding the Aurora Borealis, and more. Plus: reviews, opinion, ...

Frederick II was ill for some months before his death. Early in December 1250 a fierce attack of dysentery confined him to his hunting lodge of Castel Fiorentino in the south of Italy, which was part ...

‘Which moment would I most like to go back to? Just before the Big Bang. I realise there are risks attached.’ I opted for Latin America in the late 1960s when HMG, alarmed by the Cuban Revolution, ...