The director of the Bodleian includes some of the US president's deleted tweets in an historical survey that ranges from the Library of Alexandria to the Windrush papers. The surprise is tha... read more
In a particularly elegant diplomatic gesture, the Caliph Harun al-Rashid sent an elephant to Aachen in 802 AD. This fresh perspective draws on many Arabic sources.
The buildings that are falling into disuse and ruin all around the UK were once essential in their communities. This study - from the Anglo-Saxons to the mid-C16th shows how they worked.
Incredible though it seems, in the closing years of the GDR the Stasi trained operatives to become poets in order to infiltrate literary circles. Years of sleuthing has yielded this remarkab... read more
She arrived in America in 1807 as a refugee from Napoleonic France. Her sketches of the world she encountered there must show what Madame de la Tour du Pin a decade earlier. A lovely book.
He ruled an area of the Indian subcontinent greater than anyone until the British 2000 years later; famously he renounced war for Buddhism and promoted religious toleration throughout his mu... read more
An unusual study of ten houses that were burnt down in Ireland during the 1920s, and how it was for their owners and families, some of whom believed themselves to be integrated members of th... read more
An investigation of Jesus' messianic contemporaries and the reasons for Christianity's success. From the author of the highly regarded The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Cla... read more
A vibrant blend of social history and memoir: argues that this three-month period of nation-wide, wintry shutdown gave rise to unprecedented cultural renewal. Fingers crossed for 2021 and 2... read more