The Penal Laws of the 1690s restricted the ability of Irish Catholics to access education by prohibiting the establishment of Catholic schools. Catholic children were instead taught in informal school

A mosaic from the third or fourth century AD depicts gladiatorial combat. Rather than having slender, muscular bodies like modern athletes, these Roman fighters were lopsided and fat The gladiators of

Collecting fields often have holy grails, and in medieval illuminated manuscripts one is the Roman d’Alexandre or Romance of Alexander. The 20cm-tall book, written in Old French and illustrated with 1

Sometimes, a single narrative comes to dominate how we remember a year. So it is with 1776. This, as every history lover knows, was the date that the American colonies declared their independence, beg

Ancient Rome as you’ve never seen it before

This column is condensed from a stiffer academic one (Byzantion 51, 1981, pp8-21) intended to amplify and correct a paper on the same subject by Constance Head (Byzantion 50, 1980, pp336-40). Alongsid