Volume 74 Issue 5 May 2024

Solomon Shereshevsky died on 1 May 1958. He dreamt of being a hero but achieved greatness of another kind.

The Emperor and the Elephant: Christians and Muslims in the Age of Charlemagne by Sam Ottewill-Soulsby surfaces Umayyad and Abbasid perspectives on their Frankish frenemies.

A Nottinghamshire election in 1593 descended into farce, violence and, ultimately, futility.

The nabobs of the East India Company were considered violent, greedy and – worst of all in a time of Enlightenment – uneducated. Could their reputation as philistines be laundered?

The kapo trials of the early 1960s confronted a difficult question: how should Israel judge Jews accused of complicity in the Holocaust?

Bluestockings: The First Women’s Movement by Susannah Gibson makes a case for 18th-century proto-feminism. Do the Bluestockings fit?

Is Orkney Scandinavian or Scottish? Having passed from the former to the latter during the Middle Ages, for centuries the Danish Crown sought to take the islands back.

As Revolution broke out and turned to Terror, British citizens living in France found themselves transformed from friends of liberty to an enemy within.

As told by one medieval chronicler, Britain’s past and future had been prophesied by Merlin, who foresaw its rise, fall and conquest. Did the magician have warnings for the present?

The Anglo-Saxons knew that life – and land – is precarious, which makes its gifts precious.