D-Day deceptions and war reporters, James I’s first year on the English throne, the allure of the Via Appia, Jack the Ripper and Victorian dark tourism, and the Treaty of Todesillas.
Plus: reviews, opinion, crossword and much more!
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In spring 1944 the Allied invasion of France seemed inevitable. D-Day’s success was contingent on deception of the enemy. For that, officials turned to the press.
Catland: Feline Enchantment and the Making of the Modern World by Kathryn Hughes follows the reinvention of the cat from working animal to purrfect pet.
Following his accession, the majority of James I’s new English subjects accepted their Scottish king with ‘comforte and contentmente’. Such sentiments would not last.
When the English and Nazi German football teams met for the first time on British soil in 1935, the game was not the headline.
With a line on a map, the Treaty of Tordesillas split the world between Spain and Portugal. Was it a grand refutation of papal authority or an extension of it?
Once Rome’s main artery south, for centuries the Via Appia has been taken as proof of Roman greatness.
Ireland’s experience of partition informed the attitudes of people across the island towards British plans for Palestine. Today it informs sympathies in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Jack the Ripper was a media sensation. The press frenzy surrounding him made the sites of his murders tourist destinations, attracting thousands of visitors.
Sea of Troubles by Ian Rutledge and The Damascus Events by Eugene Rogan watch as the ‘sick man of Europe’ turns violent.
The decision to make Native Americans citizens of the United States was not straightforwardly progressive.
Age of Wolf and Wind: Voyages through the Viking World by Davide Zori proves that if you want to understand the Vikings, you need to rove just as far.
History is built with words. How have historians filled the silence that came before?
In The House Divided: Sunni, Shia and the Making of the Middle East Barnaby Rogerson seeks geopolitical answers for ideological conflicts.
A tour of Europe cemented Ronald Reagan’s reputation as an international statesman and helped secure his re-election.
Sarah Wise’s The Undesirables: The Law that Locked Away a Generation lays bare the cruelty and injustice of the Mental Deficiency Act of 1913.
On 8 June 1949, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four was published. His final novel, its themes had been present throughout his literary career.
In Don’t Let’s Be Beastly to the Germans: The British Occupation of Germany, 1945-49, Daniel Cowling brings lost stories to light – some of them, at least.
Approaching history through ideas – how people thought – is not the only method, but it is one that has stood the test of time.
Could a text thought to be by Shakespeare’s father actually be his sister’s writing?
Miyamoto Musashi was finally defeated on 13 June 1645, but it wasn’t a sword that laid the formidable samurai low.
When a priceless altarpiece was stolen from a Belgian cathedral it sparked a 90-year hunt. The crime remains unsolved.
