On 17 June 1940, when Marshal Pétain surrendered France to the Nazis, 49-year-old General Charles de Gaulle was in London. The next day he made a broadcast on the BBC: ‘Whatever happens, the flame of ...

Depending on one’s vantage point, the meaning of the French Revolution varies. The First Republic succumbed to an imperial ...

The wine trade in medieval Tunis was lucrative, but it caused a moral quandary for the ruling Hafsids.

Though his relics are reviled, his impact is more keenly felt than ever. Can The Colonialist: The Vision of Cecil Rhodes by ...

An early modern ship’s surgeon had to treat not just broken bones but distress and trauma. I n September 1649 ship’s surgeon ...

Age Beauty Farm’ – a combination spa, charm school, weight-loss clinic, and summer camp – was billed as ‘the only place in the world dedicated to making the teen-ager more beautiful’. It attracted ...

José Martí Reader: Writings on the Americas, edited by Deborah Shnookal and Mirta Muñiz, collects the works of Cuba's ‘Apostle of Independence’.

In March 1960 Julius Nyerere – then leader of the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) – sat down with former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt on her roundtable discussion programme Prospects of ...

How to reform an ancient Greek tyrant? Plato’s final advice to Dionysius the Younger was not well received.

How did a Gulf backwater become a global powerbroker? Saudi Arabia: A Modern History by David Commins explores the uneasy alliance between oil, autocracy, and Wahhabism.

America, América: A New History of the New World by Greg Grandin finds a place for Latin America and its ideals in the story of the United States.