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SubscriptionsCategory: History
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Lives Left in Stone: Cologne’s Eternal Cathedral
Will Cologne’s cathedral, which was centuries in the making, ever be considered to be truly ‘finished’? Maybe nothing we build ever is.
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Art and Disaster: ‘The Delft Thunderclap’
Mike Stuchbery on how terrible moments of devastation can be overcome with creativity and vision.
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The Art of Dying – A Medieval Blockbuster for Terrible Times
Mike Stuchbery on reading one of the first printed bestsellers – a book on how to die properly – from his hospital bed.
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THE UPSIDE DOWN: Not The Normal Norfolk – The Original Opioid Crisis
John Mitchinson on the warm haze of opioid bliss – for good and for ill – experienced by the Victorians. If there ever was a golden age for hard drug use, it was the Victorian era. The widespread use of laudanum (opium dissolved in alcohol) had first been encouraged by the greatest English doctor of…
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Jacob Rees-Mogg and the Brexiters’ Persistent Myths of Empire
Britain has not really faced up to losing an empire and the unresolved cost is playing out through the traumas of Brexit.
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Between Two Worlds: The Secrets of the Shaman of Bad Dürrenberg
On a recent trip to Germany, Mike Stuchbery came across the remains of a woman who lived some 8,500 years ago – astonishing, not only for the impressive manner in which she was buried, but the secrets that her bones contained.
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How Englishness was Created – A Culture, Not an Ethnicity
The Count of the Saxon Shore continues exploring the origins Englishness through the ‘game of thrones’ of seven kingdoms and the ‘Norway plus’ model of the time.
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The Myths of Immigration Just Don’t Add Up
Jonathan Portes, Professor of economics and public policy at King’s College London, on why the UK has long been a country shaped by immigration and immigrants – and how the reality of this is not as bad as the rhetoric portrays.
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Brexit and Empire: Nostalgia for a Nation that Never Was is Driving Britain over a Cliff
With the likely next Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, praising Britain today as the ‘Greatest Place on Earth’ all the unlearned lessons of Empire are coming back to haunt us.
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Defeating Democracy with its Own Weapons – A Warning from History
Otto English on why the Brexit Party MEPs’ decision to turn their backs on the EU’s anthem is more worrying than just being a mere stunt.
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Divide and Rule: ‘Colonial Mindsets Fuelling Islamophobia and Racism’
Hardeep Matharu speaks to Tahir Butt, a Muslim campaigner who spent nearly 30 years in the police, about his experience of racism and identity.
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King Offa of Mercia: Rejoining Europe and a Currency Union
As hustings are held throughout the country as part of that morbidly parochial spectacle that is the Tory leadership contest, the Count of the Saxon shore remembers the internationalism that was always part of the regional nature of English identity.
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The Seven Kingdoms of the North that Shaped Britain’s role in Europe
The Count of the Saxon Shore on the Anglo-Saxon arguments about independence and internationalism over a religious customs union with Europe.
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The Lesson of Dachau and the ‘Concentration Camp’ Controversy
Mike Stuchbery sheds some light on the heated debate ignited by New York congresswoman Alexandra-Cortez
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Anybody can be a Hero: The Story of Lilo Hermann
Whenever Mike Stuchbery travels to Stuttgart he is reminded that the courage to resist authoritarianism and tyranny isn’t restricted to a particular kind of individual and here manifests itself in the form of a bookish single mother.
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“All the Heroes are Dead” – the Liberation of Nazi Fortress Europe Remembered
Otto English compares the reality of war and the brotherhood through trauma of WW2 veterans with the Victor comic book versions of history.
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Unbroken: The Story of Artemisia Gentileschi
Mike Stuchbery on a renaissance artist who overcame the predatory sexism of her day and survives as an emblem of feminist persistence.
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‘The North Remembers’: How an Anglo-Saxon Game of Thrones led to a Northern Powerhouse
The Count of the Saxon Shore on why ‘the North Remembers’. It was the original source of a progressive, articulate English identity.
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London Calling – City of the World
Mike Stuchbery recalls a cacophony of people through time, who came to London and made it what it is today.
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London Never Was an English City: and the Anglo-Saxons Always Distrusted It
Built by Romans, shunned by the Anglo Saxons, renewed by the Normans, Britain’s great capital has survived adversity through diversity.
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SCIENCE HOOKER: Buying Redemption – Academic Reparations
Adi MacArtney on the debate in British institutions about how to account for their colonial past.
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She Came from Nowhere: The Tale of Jeanne Hatchette
Mike Stuchbery on another stirring story from our European past that shows how small actions can have big consequences.
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A Second Vote: How Essex Man was Always Multicultural
The Count of the Saxon explains the fluidity of Saxon religious belief as new archaeological discoveries suggest the East Saxons converted to Christianity, and back to Paganism again.
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‘A Plague Tale’ Review: A (Grim) Kind of Alchemy’
‘A Plague Tale: Innocence’ is a game about change. True to the alchemical concepts upon which much of the plot rests, the game represents an arc of corruption, distillation, purification and sublimation.
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THE UPSIDE DOWN: Show Me the Money – the Story of the First Journalist
John Mitchinson recounts the life of Daniel Defoe, the Patron Saint of Freelancers and Master of Aliases, who hustled journalism into existence three hundred years ago.
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A New Crusade for White Christian Europe? Not a Good Look
When Far Right and populist figures such as Hungary’s Viktor Orban talk about a ‘crusade’ to defend ‘Christendom’ – this should ring some very shrill alarm bells.
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As Epic as Jon Snow and Daenerys – a Glimpse of Roman Britain’s Multicultural Love
The 2nd Century tombstone near Hadrian’s Wall tells a story as exotic as anything out of Game of Thrones, the epic love story of a woman from Hertfordshire and her partner from Syria.
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The Light of the Beguines: Medieval Europe’s Altruistic Women
The story of the Beguines is important to remember in a time of increasing social fracturing.
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Two Days In April: Did Love at First Sight Change the World for Ever?
Mike Stuchbery argues that Petrarch’s passion for his muse Laura triggered the Renaissance imagination and paved the way for modernity.
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On the Ruin of Britain – the First Great National Remoaners
The Count of the Saxon recalls the first book to record the timeless British refrain – ‘things aren’t what they used to be’.
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Battle of the Bucket – So Much Blood Shed over So Little
Tribalism is killing us, wrote Tina Gharavi in our launch issue and Mike Stuchery has a vivid example of this from history.
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In the Smoke of Notre Dame: To all the Churches I’ve Loved
As the embers cool in the devastated sections of Notre Dame de Paris and the world comes together to restore it, it seems a good time to reflect on the effect that historic churches and cathedrals have had on my own life.
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One Hundred Years On: Government Concerned about ‘Financial Implications’ of Apologising for 1919 Amritsar Massacre
100 years after the horrific expression of British brutality in India, the Government still appears unwilling to formally apologise for the killings in Jallianwala Bagh.
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Get Stoned – Therapy, Neolithic Style
Mike Stuchbery argues that we need to take a salutary walk in the shadow our our ancestors to reconnect with their hopes and fears
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The Story of Brexit is the Story of Empire: Why Did Asian Immigrants Vote to Leave the EU?
The complicated love-hate relationship of immigrants from former colonies with the British Empire cannot be ignored if lessons are to be learned in post-Brexit Britain, says Hardeep Matharu
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Usurpers Three: the First Hard Brexit Propelled us into the Dark Ages
The Count of the Saxon Shore recalls how an aggressive Leave Campaign led to de-industrialisation and porous borders
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Usurpers Two: How Britain became a Haven for Rebels from the Classic European Superstate
The Count of the Saxon Shore continues his saga of the First Great Brexit – from the Roman Empire – and fostered the forerunners of Nigel Farage
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Stuchbery’s Histories: What Regiswindis Teaches Us
Mike Stuchbery takes a brief holiday from the tensions of the here and now to wonder why all those lives of the saints tend to end quite badly.
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THE UPSIDE DOWN: Why Britain Owes So Much to the Navvies
John Mitchinson explores the transformational contribution, too easily overlooked, by the labourers who built the country’s canals and railways.
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Usurpers One: Two-Thousand Years of Brexiters
The Count of the Saxon Shore recalls some of the post-Roman pirates and renegades who promised to ‘Make Britain Great Again’
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There Never was a Hard Border: Paddy was a Brit
As he patrols his British forts guarding against Anglo-Saxon invaders, the Count of the Saxon Coast recounts another true story from the first great Brexit, sixteen hundred years ago.
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THE UPSIDE DOWN: Early and Often – A Short History of Fixing Elections
John Mitchinson on the not-so-recent history of rigging the vote, bribing voters with booze and voter suppression, using whiskey
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The Foederati: How the English were the Original Federalists
The Count of the Saxon Shore provides another insight into the ‘Great Brexit from Rome’
