Category: History

Rahab and her spies.
portraits

Rahab, the Old Testament’s female super spy

Rahab the Harlot is one of the earliest examples of an intelligence operative, and her exploits illustrate the importance ordinary individuals can have in military operations...

Rose Mary SheldonDecember 16, 2024
The Roman villa of Centcelles.
portraits

R.A. Markus, historian of the secular

Was St Augustine's thought a forerunner of liberalism? The works of the historian of Late Antiquity, R.A. Markus, are a good place to unearth the foundations of secular society...

Samuel RubinsteinNovember 20, 2024
Eleanor of Provence, Queen of England.
portraits

Eleanor of Provence, a force to be reckoned with

Eleanor of Provence, wife of Henry III and mother of Edward I, was perhaps the most important female political figure in 13th-century England. Described as a ‘virago’, or female wa..

Caroline BurtOctober 29, 2024
Israel Zangwill, 1864-1926.
portraits

Israel Zangwill, forgotten creator of the Melting Pot

Once one of the most famous Jewish figures in the Western world, the novelist Israel Zangwill, chronicler of London's East End, went onto play a leading role in the early history o..

Rachel CockerellSeptember 17, 2024
Field Marshal Carl Gustaf Mannerheim, centre, discusses strategy against the Russians at his field headquarters on the Finnish-Russian border, April 1942.
portraits

Gustaf Mannerheim, leader of a free Finland

Gustaf Mannerheim's rise from a troubled youth to Finland's iconic wartime leader illustrates how leadership is forged by both personal traits and the unpredictable tides of histor..

Henrik MeinanderAugust 21, 2024
A portrait of John Clare by William Hilton, 1820.
portraits

John Clare, the peasant poet

An agricultural labourer who shot to literary fame for his rustic verse in the 19th century, John Clare was feted as ‘The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet.’ ..

Tommy GilhoolyAugust 8, 2024
Gerald of Wales, 1146-1223.
portraits

Gerald of Wales, chronicler of the Celtic world

Gerald of Wales was a 12th century chronicler whose mixed heritage and thwarted ambitions led him to pen vivid, controversial accounts of Ireland and Wales, forever shaping percept..

Katherine HarveyJuly 25, 2024
Charles IV of France, meeting his sister Isabella of France at the gates of Paris in 1325.
portraits

Queen Isabella, the ‘she-wolf of France’

Queen Isabella, daughter of the king of France and wife and mother to kings of England, was an intelligent and shrewd political operator in an era of conquest and civil war...

Caroline BurtJuly 10, 2024
Etching of Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski.
portraits

Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski, the uncrowned King of Poland

Adam Jerzy Czartoryski, a major figure in 19th Century European politics, kept the Polish Question alive...

Adam ZamoyskiJune 12, 2024
Keith Murdoch, left, in London in 1941.
portraits

Keith Murdoch, the patriarch

Decades before Rupert Murdoch ruled his news empire, his father, Keith Murdoch, was recognised and feared as a media and political powerbroker...

Michael CrickMay 15, 2024