The patriotism of pyrotechnics

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

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

An exploration into colonial ‘Emergencies’, artefacts raided from Ghana in the 19th century and Royal Logistics Corps soldiers’ sporting achievements

Why do civilisations that dominated their epoch fail? In an era of autocracy, climate change, the rise of AI and a first-hand understanding of how deadly pandemics can be, it’s a question that seems p

→ When the Tudor poet Thomas Tusser wrote of “Turkey wel drest” as part of a Christmas feast in 1573, he was in fact taking part in a trend new to these shores. Turkeys, those red-necked birds who gob

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