As cliff-edge Britain searches around for historical analogies to a ‘No Deal’ Brexit, Arthur Snell discovers an infamous King and his ill-fated adviser are the most telling of all.
A sense of British exceptionalism based on our colonial past is “alive and kicking” in hearts and minds – and we must make ourselves aware of it, warns Lord Victor Adebowale
Will Cologne’s cathedral, which was centuries in the making, ever be considered to be truly ‘finished’? Maybe nothing we build ever is.
Mike Stuchbery on how terrible moments of devastation can be overcome with creativity and vision.
Mike Stuchbery on reading one of the first printed bestsellers – a book on how to die properly – from his hospital bed.
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…
Britain has not really faced up to losing an empire and the unresolved cost is playing out through the traumas of Brexit.
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.