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Clare Mulley
The MHM award-winning author, historian, and broadcaster on overlooked stories and person-sized doorways to the past.
Ian Knight
The winner of MHM’s 2025 Book of the Year award on redcoats, distant battlefields, and the film that started it all.
Athanasius Kircher (c.1601-1680)
‘In 1638, Kircher was lowered into an awakening Vesuvius to advance his geological knowledge.’
War Athletes: Keith Truscott
No other Australian was so dear to the public as ‘Bluey’ Truscott… He was idolised and idealised, but not put on a pedestal.
Jacques Francis
He was not, Jacques Francis insisted as prosecution witnesses tried repeatedly to have his testimony thrown out, a slave. They called him ‘blackamoor’ and ‘infidel-born’, but he called himself famulus rather than
Amelia Edwards
This major figure in Egyptian archaeology was also a novelist, journalist, artist, erstwhile musician, and dauntless travel writer.
War Athletes – Wyndham Halswelle
The life of Wyndham Halswelle – Olympic athlete and soldier in the Second Boer War and Second World War.
Eugène Viollet-le-Duc
Viollet-le-Duc needed connections: he had elected not to study architecture, preferring to learn on the job.
War Athletes: Clem Lewis
At the turn of the 20th century, the first ‘Golden Era’ of Welsh rugby ushered in the national team’s rise to dominance and infused ‘rugger’ into the country’s lifeblood. Lewis, for his part, embraced the game body and soul.
Sister Janet Wells: the ‘Florence Nightingale’ of the Zulu War
Adrian Greaves reports on a Victorian nurse who served in the Russo-Turkish and Zulu Wars – earning both an Imperial Red Cross from Russia and a Royal Red Cross from Britain.
Mistress of time travel: an interview with Caroline Lawrence
Best-selling children’s writer Caroline Lawrence tells Diana Bentley where she finds the inspiration for her pacy, impeccably crafted novels and why young and old alike continue to be fascinated by the ancient world
The fabulous Mariano Fortuny
Fortuny’s designs were hugely successful among the fashionable elite of the early 20th century, and admired by intellectuals and femmes du monde alike.
War Reporters: William Howard Russell
Widely regarded as the first modern war correspondent, Russell was a globetrotter with a wide purview, reporting on the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the American Civil War, the coronation of Tsar Nicholas I, the Franco- Prussian War, and the Zulu War among many other key events of the tumultuous 19th century.
War Reporters: Jean Froissart
Froissant claimed to have born witness, during his travels, to many of the battles that took place during the Hundred Years War, committing all he had seen and heard to writing in the form of elaborate illustrated manuscripts. Seema Syeda examines battlefield scoops through the ages.
War Reporters: Julius Caesar
He was a charismatic leader, a seasoned military veteran, and a formidable politician. It is little wonder that he is rarely thought of as being an ancient example of the modern-day war reporter. Seema Syeda examines battlefield scoops throughout the ages.
When women ruled the world: an interview with Egyptologist Kara Cooney
Egyptologist Kara Cooney talks to Richard Marranca about her research into Ancient Egyptian queens and into funerary practice
Picasso – half man, half bull
Picasso never visited Greece, let alone Crete. He didn’t need to do so. He re-created it on paper. The drawings and prints in our show reveal how Picasso evoked the ancient world and peopled it with gorgeous girls who resembled his mistresses.
Vo Nguyen Giap
General Giap was one of the 20th century’s foremost military commanders. He made his name commanding the military wing of the Viet Minh during the Second World War, before becoming commander-in-chief of the People’s Army of Vietnam.
Patrick Leigh Fermor: paddy power
Dominic Green leads a tour travelling in the footsteps of the accomplished writer, scholar and soldier Patrick Leigh Fermor around Southern Greece