I had watched Richard III meet a bloody end at Bosworth, come face to face with a plague victim, stood in the shadow of a mighty trebuchet, and been put on trial for my life. And it was barely lunchti

A cough. A splutter. A jet of flame for good measure and the Merlin is prised from its slumbers and into rambunctious life. Many of you, perhaps even most, will have heard one of these engines, at Goo

Did you know that Thomas Müntzer, leader of the German Peasants’ War in 1525, used a rainbow flag to rally his followers? It’s an aptly exuberant image for the radical charisma of Müntzer, and for the

Have long wanted a chance to celebrate the Sex Pistols. Whatever you may make of Mr Rotten’s question to his last audience in America, “Ever got the feeling you’ve been had?”, the Pistols were great f

If she had given the monarch a male heir, the crowns of England and Scotland might never have been united

It was a hot day in one of the hottest and most uncomfortable summers of recent years. I was standing in a small upstairs bedroom of a house on the outskirts of a modern estate in the borough of South