Edward Colston gave millions in today's money to schools, almshouses and charitable causes, carefully crafting an image of ...

When Alexander the Great died in Babylon in 323 BC, he was preparing ships, armies and supply networks for a new phase of ...

King Olaf Tryggvason’s dramatic fall at the battle of Svolder in around AD 1000 became one of the most famous episodes of the ...

Behaving well as a host or visitor wasn’t just a matter of etiquette for the ancient Greeks – it was a sacred duty. Hilary Mitchell explores xenia, the ancient code of hospitality at the heart of Chri ...

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Cosimo de' Medici (later known as Cosimo the Elder) was, according to Pope Pius II, “king in all but name” of Florence. This was not entirely a compliment: like Pius's home city of Siena (a Tuscan ...

How did many Nazis escape – and who helped them? Rumour has long had it that the nefarious ODESSA, codename for a supposed ‘Organisation of Former SS Members’, sluiced Nazis out of Europe to South ...

The Roman empire was by no means the largest in history: in fact 25 others have occupied a larger land mass either before or since. Yet very few can boast as wide-reaching an influence and impact. At ...

The 1921 British Mount Everest Reconnaissance Expedition set out from India to find a route to, and hopefully up, the world’s highest mountain, but on their return the team had more to report than the ...

It might seem astonishing that so much political energy could be consumed by what came to be known as the Petticoat Affair, which began in 1829 when members of Andrew Jackson’s cabinet and their wives ...

Nero: a name that has come to embody the human capacity for cruelty, debauchery, even evil. The inauspicious honour of being Rome’s most notorious ruler – a hotly contested title – is often bestowed ...