The Roma Holocaust
Europe’s Roma were the victims of Nazi genocide during the Second World War, but their persecution did not end in 1945.
Feature
In Pursuit of Pith
Flowers formed from pith paper captured the imagination of British society in the 19th century, sparking a search for the elusive ‘rice paper’ plant.
The Death of an Emperor
With the US riven by civil war, Napoleon III seized the opportunity to install an emperor in Mexico. The new regime soon fell apart in a catastrophic manner.
Learning Japanese
Official secrecy and institutional rivalry obscured the achievements of two crash programmes hastily launched to teach Japanese during the Second World War.
Fake Views
The 19th-century craze for spiritualism ‘resurrected’ the dead through manipulated photography, a practice that boomed with the trauma caused by war – though it was not without its sceptics.
Saving Face
The Renaissance face provided clues about the wealth and health of its owner. Those who had been disfigured were often mistreated, but to alter one’s appearance carried a stigma of its own.
Crime in the City of Brotherly Love
At its founding, Pennsylvania had one of the most tolerant criminal law systems in the world, but by the middle of the 18th century its capital Philadelphia was a ‘hell of the officials and preachers’.
A Woman’s Place
Work was once deemed suitable for women only until they married. And it was not just men who thought that should be the case.
The French Connection
The aim of Charles I’s foreign policy was to restore his nephew’s lands in the Rhineland. France, he thought, was the key to success.
The Hidden History of Black Diplomacy
Exploring the important, but elusive, diplomatic role played by people of African descent in early modern Europe.