Dr. Toby Musgrave— Sir Joseph Banks (1743–1820) was only twenty-five years old when in 1768 he convinced both the prestigious Royal Society and the bureaucratic Admiralty that he should join HMS Endeavour as expedition natural historian. He personally paid a fortune to undertake the three-year voyage led by Lieutenant James
Susanna Braund— The Aeneid tells the story of the foundation of Rome by colonists from the East, refugees from the city of Troy in Asia Minor (modern Turkey) after it was sacked by the Greeks at the end of the ten-year Trojan War, an event to which scholars traditionally assign the
John Batchelor— Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay in 1865, the son of a highly skilled artist and sculptor, John Lockwood Kipling, and his wife Alice (nee Macdonald), who was the daughter of a celebrated Methodist. The Methodist background does not play a large part in Kipling’s life, but his
Stephen Taylor— The precise span of his long and turbulent life is a matter of some dispute. Some say he is to be seen as early as 1577, among the 166 seamen who circumnavigated the globe with Francis Drake on the Golden Hind. He was certainly recognizable by the 1650s
Michael O’Hanlon— On his trip to Europe in June of 2021, President Biden faced a question that he would likely have preferred to avoid: should Ukraine be invited to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and thereby receive a promise of mutual security from the United States as well as
Graham Seal— In the seventeenth century and long after, a lengthy ballad about the transportation of James Revel to Virginia was sold in the streets of Britain and the American colonies. In one version or another, it told the “sorrowful” tale of: … the Life of James Revel, the unhappy
David Dickson— High up on the venerable façade of Heuston railway station in Dublin one can just make out three coats of arms. They represent the cities of Cork, Limerick, and Dublin itself. That is probably the only place where the civic symbols of what were once Ireland’s three largest
Anthony Aveni— Where did it all come from? What are we doing here? What will happen to us? There’s Genesis—a creation story (actually, an amalgam of stories) told in the Middle East more than three millennia ago by a disenfranchised people that attempts to answer these profound questions. A single
Soyica Diggs Colbert— On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass delivered a speech at an Independence Day celebration that asked, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” His question troubles America’s founding democratic myths and the idea that July 4, 1776 marks a day of freedom. For the enslaved,
Evert Sprinchorn— For people with intellects, reading Ibsen was more than entertaining; it was enthralling. Reading his plays is equivalent to a journey through nineteenth-century thought, its art, politics, and philosophy. Ibsen’s collected works painted the intellectual landscape of his time as a magnificent panorama, which he traversed with a