BlogFlock

Enoch Powell, in his biography of Victorian politician Joseph Chamberlain, famously declared that “All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs.”

Chamberlain never made it to the very top of…

King Philip Augustus of France was the Plantagenets’ ultimate enemy. A ruler with an iron fist and sharp political instincts, he consistently exploited the squabbles of the English dynasty, all while transforming France into a dominant power in Western Europe.

Speaking to Emily Briffett, historian and author Catherine Hanley reveals…

Do you remember the days when the ticking of the Doomsday Clock was something that drew commentary, editorials and general fear?

Begun in 1947 by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, the clock was a symbolic way of showing just how close humanity was to global catastrophe.

Many who came together…

If you want to test your historical knowledge further, why not try our weekly crossword too?

At the end of August 1958, the streets of Notting Hill in west London became an acrid, smoke-fogged battleground. For months tensions had been building between the white population and migrants from the Caribbean. That evening, hundred-strong white mobs armed with improvised weapons – cudgels, iron bars, butchers’ knives and…

The Great Sphinx of Giza is one of the ancient world’s most enigmatic creations. So it’s no surprise that it has long been a magnet for pseudohistory and conspiracy theories. Could it be many thousands of years older than we think? Was it created by a lost civilisation? And do…

In 1908, in the remote forests of Siberia, there was a giant explosion and bright lights were seen in the sky. Was this an asteroid or a comet crashing to earth? Or could it have been an alien spacecraft – or even a human experiment gone horribly wrong?

In this…

The period after the fall of the western Roman empire is often known as the ‘Dark Ages’, due to an apparent shortage of historical evidence. Why might this be? Well, according to proponents of the Phantom Time Hypothesis, the explanation is simple: these centuries never happened at all.

In this…

With 24 number one albums in the UK charts, Paul McCartney is the most successful British artist of all time. But what if the man that we know as Paul McCartney is in fact somebody else altogether? Could it be that the former Beatle was replaced by an imposter in…