Michael Hicks— It is half a millennium since Richard III (1483–5) was king. He is traditionally regarded as the last of England’s medieval monarchs – 14th and last of the great house of Plantagenet (1154–1485) and third of the Yorkist kings (1461–85). He terminated both dynasties. He has been bracketed
Susan Bernofsky— In the spring of 1909, thirty-one-year-old novelist Robert Walser, then living in Berlin, saw a performance by one of the greatest ballet dancers of the twentieth century. Anna Pavlova wasn’t yet the international star she would later become, though she was already a lead dancer with the Maryinsky
R.J.B. Bosworth— The far-right party Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy) evokes the national anthem, written in 1847 as a theme tune of Italy’s unification in the Risorgimento. In October 1946, it replaced the Royal March (Marcia reale) and Fascist anthem, Giovinezza (Youth), which had, until 1943, given the country two national songs
Andrew Wilson— In one of the north-western corners of Rus lay the town of Polatsk, on the western river Dzvina. In those days, rivers made nations. They set trade and population flows; heavily forested hinterlands were much harder to penetrate. The Dzvina is the main river in the east Slavic
John Shovlin— For centuries, empires protected the commercial activity of Europeans overseas and secured their access to crucial resources and markets. Commerce requires protection to flourish, officials and merchants understood. At home, laws and courts assured capitalists’ property and governments blocked working-class threats to accumulation. States sought to protect merchants
Feargal Cochrane— It is difficult to overstate the chaos, confusion and emotion that accompanied the creation of Northern Ireland in 1921. It was not a smooth transition. At the stroke of a political pen, a legal line was drawn across Ireland, separating six of Ulster’s nine northern counties from the
Harry Rée— What was it that made an Englishman want to parachute into occupied France, in civilian clothes? It was understandable for Frenchmen: they naturally wanted to get back home and more still to get away from the sickbed smell of the Français de Londres. But why should there have been
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