On 27 September 1130, a Norman usurper gained a crown from a desperate pope and the Kingdom of Sicily was born.

American democracy has been haunted by the spectre of a Caesar-type figure since the birth of the republic. Have such fears ...

The seventh-century prince Mahendravarman Pallava and his cousin Vajrabodhi, the Indian tantric Buddhist answer to Merlin. Hindi, Urdu, French, Italian and a little Persian and Arabic. I am ashamed to ...

In listening to the war’s loudest voices, Crimean Quagmire: Tolstoy, Russell and the Birth of Modern Warfare by Gregory Carleton drowns out the diversity of opinion. Memoirs by British and Russian ...

Uzbekistan was a product of Islamic modernism and Soviet might. Free from the latter, the nation now seeks to foreground the ...

A rather unusual petition from October 1716 is tucked away in the pope’s diocesan archives in the basilica of San Giovanni in Rome: Antonio Piervenanzi, parish priest of San Benedetto in Piscinola, ...

In 1874 a choir of African American singers concluded a successful tour of Britain, singing songs that confronted American ...

Who should claim Scotland’s royal jewels? After the forced abdication of Mary, Queen of Scots, the answer was not clear cut.

Kenneth Arnold was flying a small plane over Mount Rainier in Washington when nine bright objects began tracking him at high ...

The French Resistance sought liberation above all else. But what should the postwar nation look like? The question was as old ...