One of the founding fathers of the United States, Alexander Hamilton, has recently become a pop culture icon, with long waits to see his namesake play on Broadway. The musical being recorded and put up on Disney+ was a cause for celebration for so many around the world, with people memorising the lyrics to the […]
The very first female agent that served with SOE was a Polish-Jewish Aristocrat known as Krystyna Skarbek. In addition to being the first woman to serve with the SOE, Skarbek was also the longest serving field agent, male or female, during the SOE’s existence. As a character in Genesis, Eve’s entire existence is explored in […]
Many things are associated with the Christmas period which we know and love and we can generally count on having a great time during the festive period. Circumstances were very different when soldiers of the Allied and German armies put down their weapons and stopped fighting to enjoy some familiar activities during the Christmas period […]
In response to the Crisis of the Third Century, in which the Roman empire faced a series of financial, military, and political crises, the administration of the empire was gradually reformed to increasingly centralise the power of the emperor(s). This laid bare to the Roman state the presence, throughout the empire, of a religious community […]
1821 was possibly the most inopportune time to begin a war for independence in Europe. A few years prior, Napoleon was crushed, and the European powers inaugurated a revived conservative status quo in the Congress of Vienna that endeavoured to prevent any further upsets to the continent’s power balance. No more shocks and a good […]
On the 7th of April 1922, Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall announced that a government drilling policy was “being rapidly formulated” which would provide reserves for the future needs of the US navy. What Fall failed to reveal, however,was the nature of this deal: he had granted this land to two of America’s oil […]
Of all the dangerous places Tim Butcher has travelled while working on his travel books, his trip to Bosnia in 2012 does not, at first glance, rank highly. His first book – Blood River – following Henry Morton Stanley’s route down the Congo River through war torn Congo, contains danger and death at every step. […]
After a tumultuous season of highs and lows, the mighty boys in blue march on down the final straight towards what is set to be a nail-biting season finale. Having enjoyed a first half of the season battling for the top spot, losing only two games and conceding seven goals, the men in sky blue […]
The ‘Ban the Bomb’ movement was a direct challenge to the existence of nuclear weapons and adapted to the changing technologies and doctrines of the ensuing Cold War between the United States and Soviet Union that followed the end of the Second World War. Among the major actors of the Cold War was Britain, whose […]
When Thatcher came to leadership on the 4th of May 1979, she said “where there is discord, may we bring harmony;” in her leadership speech. Although it wasn’t exactly the ‘harmony’ she had in mind, the British public grouped together to form their own, home-made ‘harmony’ in the form of illegal raves backdropped by the […]
During the Second World War, the Nazis and their collaborators systematically murdered six million Jews in a horrific event known as the Holocaust. The Imperial War Museum London opened a ‘Holocaust Gallery’ in October 2021, and it contrasts previous exhibitions by presenting individuals as identifiable and ordinary people. The exhibition aims to provide a deeper […]
Ashburne Hall was first created in 1899 and soon became a symbol of the move toward equality in terms of female academia. Prior to the creation of Ashburne Hall, John Owens had created a male only cohort at the university and it wasn’t until an act of parliament that the barrier preventing women attending university […]
The Great Fire of London is one of the most well-known disasters in London’s history. Bringing major devastation to the City, the fire blazed for almost five days from Sunday 2nd September to Wednesday 5th September. It followed on from another catastrophic strike to medieval London, the Great Plague, however the fire arguably left behind […]
We’ve all heard of Saint Patrick’s Day. Every year on 17 March people all over the world celebrate this occasion and all things Irish by dressing up in green and consuming copious amounts of alcohol. Yet most people know little about who Saint Patrick actually was and why this day is so widely celebrated. Despite […]