Five things you (probably) didn’t know about… the first world war

On a beautiful summer’s morning almost 110 years ago, men of the British Army stepped out into no-man’s land at 7.30am. It was 1 July 1916, and the start of what was then called ‘The Big Push’. With h

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

Glasgow, 1942. The Carl Rosa Opera Company was in town to perform Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. Tickets had been snapped up by local people – including many who didn’t really know what an opera was. The

Berlin Military-service plan agreed: Germany’s coalition government has ...

Why on earth would I want to walk to Auschwitz, the biggest site of mass murder on the far side of Poland? The fact that I’d already walked half the distance is only part of the answer. Two years earl

I read recently that scientists allegedly agree that there is no increase in extreme weather events and conditions. If that’s so, the journals I checked must not yet have got the memo. The German Helm