Natalya Semenova– Why do people even begin collecting? This has been bothering me for a long time. After all, I collect the stories of my protagonists in the same way they collected paintings and sculptures. Collecting is undoubtedly one of the most ancient viruses, even though collectors as we know
Thomas Waters— Witchcraft differed from one region to the next, but it also varied over much shorter distances. Certain desolate, inhospitable or generally ominous locations were known as the favoured haunts of witches. Prolley Moor in Shropshire was a notorious meeting place for practitioners of the dark arts, as was
Robert Holland— On 16 August 1822, it took Lord George Byron, his friend Edward Trelawny, a gaggle of Tuscan soldiers and a local health official an hour to find the spot on the beach near Viareggio where Percy Bysshe Shelley’s corpse had been left two weeks before in the burning
Rebecca Clifford— Lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union have revealed the agonizing fact that they have not been able to trace the parents of 545 children who were separated from their families at the U.S.-Mexico border. The Trump administration’s policy of separating migrant children from their parents officially ended in
Helen Fry— Thousands of courageous men and women led escape lines and acted as couriers and guides across Western Europe as well as other theatres of war, including the Far East. They were prepared to work in secret, for an organization whose name, MI9 in Britain or MIS-X in America,
Andrew Imbrie— Imagine a country laid low by foreign wars, ravaged by plague, and weakened by political dysfunction, economic recession, and multiple bankruptcies. Instead of preparing for the future, its leaders engage in fierce disputes over the balance of trade, wage bitter debates over religion and immigration, and stoke tensions
Peter Burke— People are talking more and more about polymaths these days, but at the same time, living examples of this intellectual species are becoming more and more difficult to find. By polymath I mean, like the ancient Greeks who coined the term, someone who has mastered many intellectual disciplines,
Tom Licence— As Edward the Confessor lay dying in 1066, according to his contemporary biographer, he foresaw the Norman invasion and England’s downfall within a year. Sir Winston Churchill, in his History of the English-Speaking Peoples, alludes to this prophecy at the end of his account of Edward’s reign. “The
Yoram Gorlizki and Oleg Khlevniuk— Over the last few weeks Russia has been rocked by demonstrations in a number of regions. One of the key points of contention has been the dismissal and arrest on July 9, 2020, of the popular governor in Khabarovsk, Sergei Furgal. Local protesters have rallied
Christian Goeschel— The meetings between Mussolini and Hitler were robust projections of an aggressive challenge to the Wilsonian post-war order. The Fascist and Nazi regimes defied lurking tensions to promote a powerful image of unity, a unity symbolised by the dictatorial friends meeting amidst their peoples – in marked contrast