James Gillray: life of the week

In 2010, the world was stunned when the United States exposed a covert Russian spy network operating on its soil. Seemingly all-American families living in white-picket-fenced suburbia were in fact de...

26 Aug 202546min

Edward the Confessor, England’s penultimate Anglo-Saxon king, has long been remembered as a saintly, pious monarch – but was he really the weak ruler whose indecision paved the way for the Norman Conq...

25 Aug 202549min

Histories of British involvement in the Caribbean tend to focus mainly on the period of plantation slavery but, in her new book Empire Without End, Imaobong Umoren argues that we need to take a broade...

24 Aug 202530min

Human beings tend to identify with being in a group, and, historically, few groupings have been more potent than the idea of the nation. But when did people first embrace the idea of the nation state?...

23 Aug 202545min

In 1775, a respectable lady, a mild-mannered apothecary and his fast-living identical twin stood accused of pulling off a scam that had earnt them a fortune. But as their trial unfolded, the defendant...

22 Aug 20258min

After causing the extinction of the dodo, humans soon realised that we had the power to destroy entire species – and we continue to reckon with that power. Speaking to James Osborne, Sadiah Qureshi di...

21 Aug 202535min

Christianity came to dominate Europe in the Middle Ages. However, some parts of Europe remained pagan until very recently. So how did non-Christian peoples survive, and prosper, in parts of Europe for...

19 Aug 202541min

In the latest episode of our monthly series charting the historical background of current news events, historians Hannah Skoda and Rana Mitter discuss how VJ Day is remembered 80 years on – and explor...

18 Aug 202545min