1942 Quiz

The arrival of which 42,900-ton German battleship in Norwegian waters posed a grave threat to Allied shipping convoys in January 1942?…

The Bell Airacuda

Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Britain all produced their versions of the type, such as the Bf 110, Potez 630, Fokker G.I, and the Beaufighter.…

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In Memoriam: Dr Neil Faulkner

As all who worked with him here would agree, he was not just a man of extraordinary and wide-ranging intellectual and professional ability, but also a hugely generous, thoughtful, and kind collaborator and colleague...…

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Samurai: history and legend

For many centuries, the outside world knew little of the Japanese way of life. Before the Meiji Restoration of 1868 – after which the country rapidly modernised and opened itself up to global trade – only a handful of books and manuscripts had made their way beyond its shores. Some…

War of Words – ‘GLADIATOR’

Gladius was a general Latin word for ‘sword’. A gladiator was someone who fought with a gladius – a swordsman. As usually employed today, gladius refers to a double-edged short sword.…

Waterloo Quiz

From which island did the exiled Napoleon escape in February 1815, setting off the chain of events which led to the Battle of Waterloo?…

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Last Word: Neil Faulkner

Neil was an interesting person, as he lived two lives. One was as an archaeologist, as a tour guide, excavator, and valued contributor to our magazines. But he also had another life, as a revolutionary Marxist...…

English Channel Quiz

France and England were once connected by land. River crossings aside, when would it last have been possible to walk between the two?…

Finds tray – Seal of Matilda de Cornhill

Seal matrices are inscribed, flat-bottomed metal items used to make impressions on wax to create ‘seals’ – marks of authentication commonly appended to medieval documents. They are made, typically, of lead or copper-alloy and, more rarely, of precious metal. This example, dating to the early 13th century, is made of…

Kurdistan Quiz

Between which five present-day countries is the roughly defined geo-cultural territory of Kurdistan mostly now divided?…

Ninagawa Noritane

In the 1930s, an admirer remembered Japanese antiquarian Ninagawa Noritane fondly as ‘simple-hearted and unpretentious. He was frugal and sometimes walked around wearing a lampshade hat woven with rush.’ He added, perhaps unnecessarily, ‘It should be said that he was a rather extraordinary individual.’ Certainly Ninagawa lived in extraordinary times.…

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Egyptian afterlives: an interview with Salima Ikram

As shown by the excitement surrounding the discovery of Tutankhamun 100 years ago, mummies and Egyptian tombs have an impressive ability to capture our imagination. Richard Marranca speaks to Egyptologist Salima Ikram to find out more about these funerary finds, from early medicinal mummies to recent revelations at Saqqara.…

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