“like ancient greece, india is one of the seedbeds of civilisation”

I n 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. That, at least, is what the famous rhyme tells us. Memorising such dates is a common experience of being taught history – a cliché superbly lampooned by the w

I greatly enjoyed your interview with Alice Roberts about her new book Domination, (Books Interview, September), and its argument that the church was essentially Rome rebadged, with its structures and

I REMEMBER LOOKING IN THE BBC ARCHIVES for stories of the first arrivals of South Asians in the postwar years, and being surprised at how little programming had been made documenting the experiences o

Danny Bird Your book opens with the story of a woman named Solitude on Guadaloupe. Why did you choose to start with her and what can she tell us about the wider history of resistance among enslaved pe

WATCHING THE RECENT SPECTACLE OF THOSE latter-day emperors President Xi of China and India’s Narendra Modi hugging each other at the summit in Tianjin, my mind cast back to an earlier image of a pan-A

Were you interested in history from a young age? What first sparked your interest in the past? I hated history in school because it was boring – although I did read historical novels even then. Later,