Europe’s taste for power

It was a raucous scene, as Jacobean banquets tended to be. Men and women of the court, one observer recalled, “rolled in intoxication”. Even the most temperate had collapsed into “brutish delights”, l

Ancient India gave the world its number system, anticipated Galileo’s heliocentric theory by a millennium and spread its culture from Egypt to Siberia–only to be almost entirely forgotten. It’s past time to restore it to its rightful place in history

Bloodthirsty privateer to some, heroic governor of Jamaica to others, the legacy of Henry Morgan is steeped in controversy

Prior to 1920, yacht cruising was an occupation indulged in by precious few. If you wanted to go sailing, you raced off Cowes with a professional crew and captain. The concept of slumming it in some s

Sceptred Isle: A New History of the Fourteenth ...

Modern art is sometimes hard to swallow – as in a recent case where an artist bought three piglets which he put into a cage made of old shopping trolleys to have them “painfully” die from hunger. Dani