Tombs Ltd, the New Zealand print shop where I served a small part of an apprenticeship that would have made me a compositor. ...

People have been seeing weird things in the sky since the beginning of recorded history, but popular fascination ...

Daniel Defoe , in his Tour thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724-26), was unimpressed by the prehistoric remains.

Some time in the sixth or early seventh century, a woman in Constantinople was suffering from severe abdominal pain. One night she crawled out of bed and dragged herself to the part of the house where ...

France on Trial: The Case of Marshal Pétain by Julian Jackson. The trial of Marshal Pétain began on 23 July 1945 and lasted until 15 August. The small Paris courtroom was crowded with lawyers, jurors ...

In the late summer of 32 BC, Rome declared war on Ptolemaic Egypt and its powerful queen, Cleopatra. In front of the Temple of Bellona, the Roman goddess of war, a member of an archaic priestly order ...

The old man told my French nephew that he had something special to show him. Something he had thought best to keep in a drawer since 1943. In that village, families at Christmas decorate their crib ...

She first saw him walking ‘rather contemptuously’ across the Pont Marie. Frock coat, tall hat, ‘gone-bad, luminous look’. Risen from the pages of Enid Starkie’s Life, here was her hero of heroes, ...

In 1977, Abba were waiting at Arlanda Airport in Stockholm when they noticed a dishevelled young man charging towards them. Their security guards spotted him too, along with the spatter of dried vomit ...

Ionce witnessed Stephen Spender being evil in a London club. A mandarin of poetry, he seemed almost fluorescent with stories and vital resentments, twisting the stem of his glass as he offered ...