What Shakespearean food reveals about early m...

By 1889, Jack the Ripper's grisly murders had sparked terror throughout London. So when the mutilated body of a woman was found beneath railway arches near the Thames, a coded alert was dispatched to warn metropolitan police divisions: "Another Whitechapel." But her killer wasn't ...  Show more

How do civilisations collapse? That was the question at the heart of Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Two hundred and fifty years after it was published, this Long Read, written by Guy de la Bédoyère, argues that Gibbon's magnum opus remain ...  Show more

The later Tudor years were a time of turmoil, political intrigue, and national transformation. Initially defined by crises of succession, and shifts in the religious landscape, the period went on to see the reign of some of the most famous royal women in history. And, under the 4 ...  Show more

Measuring 240 feet long from paw to tail, and around the height of a six-story building, the Great Sphinx is one of Egypt’s most spectacular, and mysterious, monuments. Believed to have been built over four millennia ago, much of its story has been lost to history, and the rest i ...  Show more

King Henry VIII famously ran into a world of problems trying to get out of his numerous marriages. And interestingly, we can find a similar story of royal marital strife all the way back in the ninth-century - during the reign of Lothar II. When this Carolingian ruler tried to di ...  Show more

The early medieval Carolingian empire played a crucial role in the development of Europe throughout the Middle Ages. Though the dynasty itself was not that long-lived, it was star-studded with famous rulers such as Charles Martel and Charlemagne, and its legacy stretched far and ...  Show more