The Time of the Whites: The Will to Colonise

Rahmane Idrissa, 20 February 2025

The will to colonise has not disappeared. Russia seeks to recolonise Ukraine. Israel relentlessly appropriates Palestinian land. Trump speaks of ‘reclaiming’ Canada, Greenland. The conditions that...

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At the Courtauld: Gothic Ivory

Christopher Snow Hopkins, 6 February 2025

The point of the show isn’t to prove that reproductions fail to do justice to the original. The curators argue instead that reproductions have much to tell us about the production of art-historical...

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Illusions of Containment: Versions of Hamas

Tom Stevenson, 6 February 2025

Hamas had been able to take power in Gaza because Israel had failed to circumscribe Palestinian politics within the Oslo boundaries. But in the event, Hamas was useful to Israel's larger strategy of occupation.

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Resident Bean Expert: Leningrad under Siege

Jessie Childs, 6 February 2025

Five thousand Leningraders died of distrofia on Christmas Day 1941. One of them was Aleksandr Shchukin, a 58-year-old botanist found dead at his desk at the All Union Institute of Plant Breeding just...

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Slim for Britain: Solidarity Economy

Susan Pedersen, 23 January 2025

No one who has lived in Britain would contest that Oxfam (and Save the Children, War on Want, Live Aid and the other big aid campaigns and organisations) did matter a lot: they don’t need to be credited...

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Snobs, Swots and Hacks

Jonathan Parry, 23 January 2025

No doubt, some individuals have always pulled levers behind the scenes to benefit themselves and their families financially. But the authors of Born to Rule have no evidence that the inheritors of old...

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The Great Transformation was an exceptionally bold effort to make sense of contemporary developments on an international scale by telling a quasi-historical story that linked the spinning jenny, Malthus...

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James VI and I called the first duke of Buckingham ‘Steenie’ – short for St Stephen, who, it was said, had the face of an angel. Buckingham called James his ‘dear dad and husband’, and himself...

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Saints for Supper

Alexander Bevilacqua, 26 December 2024

From frescoes and printed devotional images to incised amulets, moulded gingerbread and the stamped Eucharistic host, a wide variety of images has, at various moments in Western history, seemed worthy...

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The Murmur of Engines: A Historian's Historians

Christopher Clark, 5 December 2024

Perry Anderson brings a peculiar gift to the work of criticism: he can step into a book and inspect it closely, even sympathetically, scrutinising its structures, immersing himself in its style and atmosphere;...

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Magnificent Progress: Tudor Marriage Markets

Diarmaid MacCulloch, 5 December 2024

Henry VIII’s relationship with his sister was never easy, and not made easier by her ready recourse to long letters that rarely achieved the level of sycophancy Henry expected, and were often written...

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Salt Spray: When Britannia Ruled the Waves

Ferdinand Mount, 5 December 2024

An ocean-going navy is not a workaday public service, like a coastguard or a constabulary. It is a grand project, an ambition, a national glory or a national shame. Its power is hard-gained and fragile;...

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The only certainty about the picture is that it shows Francis Williams. No one has ever been able to discover who painted it, when, where or why. And then, a few months ago, everything changed.

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Cultural Judo: Alberti and the Ancients

Anthony Grafton, 21 November 2024

Alberti the writer, first and last, was Alberti the reader, whose attitude towards ancient (and later) texts was anything but passive. He grew up in an age of textual discoveries – the hunting and gathering...

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The Unpoetic Calorie: Food Made Flesh

Erin Maglaque, 21 November 2024

What is it about the body that resists plain description? When we discuss our bodies, we evoke other things: the body as machine, possibly malfunctioning; the body as computer, infinitely programmable....

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At the Rijksmuseum: Panniers and Petticoats

Clare Bucknell, 21 November 2024

Underwear has useful, basic functions. It protects bodies from being chafed or scarred by rough outer clothing. It also protects clothing from the body. Because of its proximity to intimate areas, sites...

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Pop, Crackle and Bang: Fireworks!

Malcolm Gaskill, 7 November 2024

The main application of gunpowder was inevitably in warfare, which has its own volatile story, but the enterprise of refining gunpowder for entertainment ran in parallel, and its history traces a long...

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A Walnut in Sacrifice: How to Cast a Spell

Nick Richardson, 7 November 2024

Belief in a multitude of non-human entities, and in the ability of humankind to forge relationships with them via magical words and images, appears to be almost universal – and wherever these beliefs...

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