BlogFlock

You should never trust a curmudgeon. If someone hates everything, it doesn’t mean much when they also hate this thing. That’s why, whenever I get hopped up on criticizing the current state of psychology, I stop and ask myself, “Okay, but what’s good?”…

In the Boyne Valley of eastern Ireland stands one of the world’s most fascinating prehistoric monuments: Newgrange.

Centuries older than the Pyramids of Giza or Stonehenge, Newgrange is a large passage tomb, and a 5,000-year-old marvel of ancient engineering. It’s also one of the best windows that researchers have…

Tall and thin, with glowing red eyes, a monstrous face, sharp metallic claws and the power to breathe fire – this was, for several decades, the most common description of a supernatural entity that terrorised Victorian England.

Who was Spring-Heeled Jack?

Spring-Heeled Jack was the name given to a ‘phantom’…

Millions of tourists flock to London each year, eager to snap a selfie in front of Buckingham Palace or Big Ben. But beyond the crowds lies a darker – and distinctly stranger – side to the city: a gothic metropolis haunted by tales of demons, poltergeists and murders most foul.…

I meet a lot of people who don’t like their jobs, and when I ask them what they’d rather do instead, about 75% say something like, “Oh, I dunno, I’d really love to run a little coffee shop.” If I’m feeling mischievous that day, I ask…

In the rough and rugged landscape of early medieval England, power was rarely won by brute force alone. To survive (and thrive) Anglo-Saxon rulers needed more than willing soldiers. They needed cunning strategies, a mastery of kinship ties, diplomacy and, when required, cold-blooded violence.

One kingdom in particular defined this…

Witty, waspish and armed with a pen as sharp as her cheekbones, Nancy Mitford – the eldest of the Mitford sisters – was the family’s satirist-in-chief and arguably its most enduring literary star.

As a young woman, she cut a dazzling figure among the ‘Bright Young Things’ – a gilded,…

Professor James Palmer guides us through the 300-year reign of the Merovingians, the Frankish dynasty whose legacy helped birth the very idea of France. Speaking to Kev Lochun, he explores how they used violence, myth, and immaculate hair to maintain power – until the pope brought the dynasty to its…

Diana Mitford was the most dazzling and infamous of the Mitford sisters, an aristocratic British family who became particularly well known in the 1930s. Tall, blonde and a celebrated society beauty, she captivated everyone from poets to politicians.

But her charm masked a steely resolve and political conviction that…

Of all the Mitford sisters, Unity Valkyrie Mitford – nicknamed ‘Bobo’ and ‘Boud’ by her siblings – was the most chilling. Tall, striking and unflinchingly devoted to extremes, Unity was a Nazi fanatic who herself part of Adolf Hitler’s entourage.

Her very name was a dramatic flourish: Unity…