July 28, 2022
The life of the iconic libertine Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) has never been told in the depth it deserves. An alluring representative of the Enlightenment’s shadowy underside, Casanova was an aspiring… READ MORE
November 11, 2021
Henry Kamen, author of Early Modern European Society, recounts the debate over resources and the themes of conservation taking root across Europe in early modern times. These issues are still relevant… READ MORE
August 3, 2021
Ashley L. Cohen— On a winter evening a man sits by his fireside, waiting for the serene quiet of his country retirement to be interrupted by the delivery of a… READ MORE
July 22, 2021
Margarette Lincoln— So wrote John Donne, poet and priest, who described London in the 1600s as “a place full of danger and vanity and vice,” neatly encapsulating its horror and… READ MORE
July 21, 2021
Emily Cockayne— Marginal foodstuffs were eaten in dearth years when regular supplies dwindled. There were fewer opportunities for hedgerow foraging, mushroom picking and rabbiting in the cities than there were… READ MORE
July 19, 2021
Lee Jackson— The emergence of the ‘gin palace’ in the 1830s, on the cusp of the Victorian era, seems a good place to start. These alluring drinking establishments, adorned with… READ MORE
July 15, 2021
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… READ MORE
July 13, 2021
Jonathan Petropoulos— At the start of my sabbatical in the summer of 2000, I was living in Munich, making it easier to contact Lohse. I had his telephone number and… READ MORE
July 6, 2021
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… READ MORE
July 1, 2021
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… READ MORE
The Elusive Archive
