The first note known to have sounded on earth was an E natural. It was produced some 165 million years ago by a katydid (a kind of cricket) rubbing its wings together, a fact deduced by scientists ...

The good news is that we’re all doomed. Humankind has made such a hash of the stewardship of creation that God looks like a chump for entrusting it to us. Most of the biosphere would be better off ...

Why do we never talk about Heliogabalus? For those who enjoy stories of depraved Roman emperors, he knocks the sandals off Caligula and Nero. The nicknames he acquired after a reign of just four years ...

Does the misuse of the word ‘literally’ make your toes curl? Do the vocal tics of young ’uns set you worrying about the decline of the noble English language? You are not alone. But your fears are ...

In June 1941 I happened to be in, of all places, Palestine, flying with the RAF against the Vichy French and the Nazis. Hitler happened to be in Germany and the gas-chambers were being built and the ...

The Spanish Empire was an improbable creation. Relatively poor, meagrely populated and only recently integrated, Spain nonetheless built the largest realm the world had seen. From a landlocked capital ...

Bioarchaeologist Aarathi Prasad’s latest book is about one of the most extraordinary natural phenomena ever to have been exploited by man. Soft yet strong, delicate yet robust, the protein filaments ...

Earth was dying. We had five years left to live. Ziggy Stardust, the bisexual alien rock star, was sent from another planet to grey, binary 1970s Britain to give us a message of hope. I’m not sure ...

During lockdown, a Twitter account called Bookcase Credibility (bio: ‘What you say is not as important as the bookcase behind you’) gathered a hundred thousand followers for its witty captions ...

Wolfgang Münchau has, for more than thirty years, been one of the most acute and penetrating commentators on the European Union, writing in the Financial Times, the New Statesman and elsewhere. What I ...

‘European societies are still capable of decivilizing themselves today,’ Klaus-Michael Bogdal reminds us towards the end of Europe and the Roma, his magisterial contribution to the understanding of ...

Wispy, thick, swirled and streaking, the dark lines burst outward, racing or splintering. The strongest impression one is left with while paging through this exquisitely produced volume of Kafka’s ...