This week: Hadrian’s Wall
This week on The Past, we are delighted to celebrate a very special milestone: the 400th issue of our sister publication Current Archaeology – the ground-breaking specialist magazine, first published in March
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This week: Ancient fortifications
The obvious comparison, here in Britain, is with Hadrian’s Wall – the great Roman fortification that stretches for 73 miles across the country from coast to coast. Yet the Great Wall of
This week: The Neolithic
If the past is a foreign country – as the novelist L.P. Hartley famously suggested in the opening line to The Go-Between (1953) – then prehistory is surely a whole other world
Neolithic Quiz
In which English county would you find Silbury Hill, the tallest Neolithic human-made mound in Europe?
This week: The American Civil War
The most important event in the history of the USA began with a disagreement – over the place of slavery in a democratic society. By the time it ended, more than 620,000
This week: Coronations
It seems likely that Harold Godwinson was the first king to be crowned at Westminster Abbey, though there is no documentary evidence from the time to confirm this. As a result, that
Coronations Quiz
The coronation of Elizabeth II was broadcast live on 2 June 1953. Who provided the BBC TV commentary from inside the Abbey?
This week: Scent and smells
As consumers, we are well aware that scent sells. Supermarkets have for years been luring us in with delicious (if artificial) aromas of fresh coffee and newly baked baguettes, while cinema-owners’ profits
This week: Elites
These days, it sometimes seems hard to read a newspaper, or scan a news website, without coming across an article about the ‘new elites’ who run our world. Often this is in
This week: Pharaohs
For almost 200 years, visitors to the British Museum have stood in awe in front of the statue known as the Younger Memnon – one of two colossal granite heads which originally
This week: Shipwrecks
There are, according to the heritage body Historic England, at least 37,000 shipwrecks strewn along the country’s coastline – a legacy of more than 6,000 years of maritime trade, exploration and warfare.
This week: Roman battles
As any Asterix fan will tell you, the siege of Alésia occupies a special place in the French psyche. The climactic action of Julius Caesar’s conquest of Gaul took place in September
This week: Roman forts
It is understandable perhaps, here in Britain, that we have a somewhat partial understanding of Ancient Rome’s border defences – with most attention focused naturally on Hadrian’s Wall, the extraordinary fortified structure
This week: The Vietnam War
It began as an anticolonial struggle against the French, and ended as the Cold War’s bloodiest battleground. By the time the last US troops were withdrawn on 29 March 1973 – fifty
Vietnam War Quiz
What code name was given to America’s heavy bombing campaign between March 1965 and November 1968?
This week: Churchill’s US arsenal
He is, without doubt, the most quoted prime minister in British history. But even by his own standards, the speech that Winston Churchill made on 5 March 1946 stands out. Addressing an
This week: Gladiators
At its height, the Roman Empire grew to an area of around two million square miles, stretching from Mesopotamia in the east to Lusitania (modern-day Portugal) in the west – a distance
This week: Knossos
According to the catalogue for the new exhibition at Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum, Knossos is the place where ‘myth, archaeology and reinforced concrete come together’ – a neat encapsulation of some of the
