History

Nothing makes history trickier to investigate than the whiff of scandal. Coverups and spin aren’t modern inventions, and when it makes every source you have unreliable then getting to the truth of the matter becomes all but impossible. So…

Easter Week 1916 saw many cats and dogs across Dublin run in fear of the chaos resulting in a significant number of homes across the capital having lost pets in the aftermath of the Rising. One pet who stubbornly stayed in his home was the…

The genius of Eugène François Vidocq lay in one simple principle. In order to catch a criminal, you had to be able think like a criminal. And in his case that was easy, because he was one. He’s sometimes referred to as “the French Jonathan…

“Who was the worst Roman emperor?” is a commonly asked question, and one which is difficult to answer for many reasons. Not least of those is “worst for whom?” Rome was a slave economy after all, so an emperor good for the city of Rome was…

Stones crunch under my feet as I step off the main road onto the track that jackknifes into the bog. The land is flat. And the wind has swept the clouds from the sky so that the horizon is a clear blue. It comes to rest on the distant…

They say history belongs to the winners, but that’s only half the story. History also belongs to glory hounds. Those who trumpet their triumphs, those who seek to make sure that they are remembered. As for those who would as soon be…

According to the National Museum of Australia, the first rebellion in Australia took place in 1804 and it was a Kerryman who started it. Up to 300 convicts were led by Kerry born Philip Cunningham in a revolt on a New South Wales prison…

In 1703, at the dawn of the eighteenth century, a traveler came to London Town. A native of a far-off land, kidnapped by Catholic missionaries but rescued by a Protestant minister, he was practically tailor-made for the fervently Protestant…

Content warning: this column discusses suicide and episodes of suicidal ideation in the life of Hans Fallada. Societies don’t go wrong all at once. Things get worse by degrees, and it can slowly creep up on you. You convince yourself that…

History is a presence in everyday life and few would likely combat such a sentiment. However, the actual study of history, namely historical objects, be they visual or material, has long remained an academic endeavour. Yet in the last few…