Fanny Duberly was the horse-loving wife of a Victorian cavalry officer. When the Crimean War broke out in 1854 she was twenty-six, cheerful, childless and strong-minded. She was among the handful of ...

It is often a challenge for historians to find the right balance between the human factor and the historical forces at play. The value of Archie Brown’s study of the three extraordinary politicians ...

Crim con is one of those great eighteenth-century terms. Jaunty and crisp, it sounds like it must be a lot of fun, whatever it means. The unabbreviated phrase, criminal conversation, is a euphemism ...

Robert Harris’s new historical-fictional foray delves into the early career and meteoric rise of Marcus Tullius Cicero, whose surname derives from the Latin for ‘chickpea’, as he entertainingly tells ...

Reading the publisher's blurb for this novel, I'm disappointed. It promises an 'exciting new departure' from Maggie O'Farrell's previous work, the best book you'll read all year, and so on. 'Exciting' ...

With close to five hundred records relating to his life surviving and the prospect of still more being found, Geoffrey Chaucer remains one of the best-documented premodern Britons. The commanding size ...

In 1939 and for at least the next fifteen years, Peter Fleming was much more successful and famous than his younger brother Ian. He was known as an explorer and adventurer, wrote bestselling books and ...

The existence of Fashion depends on people buying more clothes than they wear out. If a garment is replaced only when it is worn out there is no Fashion, if it is worn beyond its natural replacement ...

Mary Kenny’s essential thesis in this thoughtful book is that popular Irish attitudes to the British monarchy, while formally based on the acceptance of a radical republican repudiation of the Crown ...

Historians of Restoration London know John Ogilby (c 1600–1676) for the marvellous post-Fire survey of the capital that he produced with his step-grandson, William Morgan, which was published in 1677; ...

War reporters come in many types and guises (and degrees of honesty). John Hersey was at the peak of the profession during the Second World War, rivalled among Americans only by the GIs’ own ...

Anthony Gottlieb’s new book is the second instalment in a planned three-part history of Western philosophy. The first volume, The Dream of Reason, took the story from Socrates and Plato to the ...