In 1866 James Hole, a writer from Leeds, called for ‘a little wholesome despotism’ in tackling the problems of housing the urban working classes. He was not alone in favouring a no-nonsense, top-down ...

W.A. Coupe argues that German cartoonists ridiculed Hitler as a Chaplinesque little man, so it was easy not to take him seriously – until it was too late.

When his father, Rama II, died in 1824 the Siamese throne went to Mongkut’s older half-brother, who ruled as Rama III. Mongkut, aged 19, joined a monastery. Three months was customary. Mongkut stayed ...

The Scapegoat: The Brilliant Brief Life of the Duke of Buckingham by Lucy Hughes-Hallett picks through the fragments of George Villiers, James VI & I’s favourite mistake. Reading The Scapegoat ...

The Nationalists had run out of steam and Communist armies took Nanjing in April and Shanghai in May. The Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference was summoned to Beijing, where Mao opened ...

'Clearly, our starting point must be the people of the world. Only afterwards can we talk about things.' So Braudel introduces his discussion of the changes in world population from 1400 to l800. This ...

Roger II, it has been said, conceived of his Sicilian kingdom as a ‘work of art’. If so, contemporary reviews were mixed at best. To Bernard of Clairvaux he was ‘the Sicilian usurper’; to the ...

The prospect of a second Donald Trump victory in November’s US election has widely been seen – at least by liberal commentators –as an apocalyptic threat to democracy. Indeed, the coming election is ...