So great was the Greeks’ concern with living too long – what Emily Wilson calls ‘overliving’– that they had a cautionary myth about it. The immortal rosy-fingered...
Throughout the summer of 1763, a succession of Indian chiefs journeyed through the forest west of the British colonial town of Albany, New York, all heading for a single destination. Tuscaroras,...
Like Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, Gödel’s incompleteness theorem has captured the public imagination, supposedly demonstrating that there are absolute limits to what can...
‘They fell upon their own knees, and then upon the Aborigines.’ The old quip about the Puritans who settled colonial New England offers a succinct and not inaccurate summary of...
On his release from jail, Gordon Liddy, the Watergate conspirator, set up as a radio guru, with a nationally syndicated show dispensing cracker barrel philosophy and a folksy view of the world. A...
When I read for the English Bar in the 1960s, the legal history lecturer stopped when he reached 1649 and explained that he was now moving directly to 1660, because everything that had happened...
In 1950 the Israeli parliament passed the Nazis and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law, the first constitutional expression of Israel’s belief that it must act as the heir of the Jews...
It’s the noise I miss the most. The Kennington Road is a barren speedtrack. Buses can get up a good lick there, if passengers at request stops don’t flag them down. Even if your head...
The story of Doubting Thomas, examined at length in this learned and fascinating book, has its origin in a brief passage near the end of St John’s Gospel. After the crucifixion, when the...
The inexhaustible appeal of the palaces that line the Grand Canal in Venice owes much to their variety, of materials, textures, colour and relief, as well as period and style. But we cannot miss...
Four years ago I promised myself that if I ever wrote a piece about fashion, I would put in the story of going to see my brother’s body and buying an outfit at the Aberdeen branch of...
On 25 January 1788, HMS Supply eased her way between the imposing sandstone cliffs that mark the entrance to Port Jackson and into a waterway that John White, the First Fleet’s surgeon,...
These two paperbacks, of Geoffroi de Charny’s A Knight’s Own Book of Chivalry and Edward, Duke of York’s The Master of Game, make accessible two texts that are of exceptional...
Few Irish nationalist commentators or politicians doubt that the insurrection of Easter 1916 was the most important event in 20th-century Irish history, marking the moment when Ireland emerged...
In the 13th century, Florence banned its noble families from holding public office and instituted a republic. The names of a few hundred select citizens were placed in leather bags and every two...
As soon as you realise how good it is, this book will frighten you. This is not just a history. It is a highly intrusive biography, especially if, like me, you belong to the British generations...
Their resolve fortified by the sturdy civic virtue of Cato and Brutus, and their idea of republican self-government indebted to Greco-Roman models, the founders of American independence deferred...
The extraordinarily long, extraordinarily bloody world wars of the 20th century were fought very largely by unwilling conscripts, and that too was extraordinary, as was the consequence that many...