Tessa Dunlop
The winner of MHM’s 2026 Book of the Year award on time travel, iconic women, and the complexity of conflict.
The comprehensive website for archaeology, history, heritage and the ancient world. Find out more about us here
Sir Lawrence Freedman
The academic, historian, and author on war stories, shifting interests, and some memorable moments.
Damien Lewis
The best-selling author, historian, and film-maker on untold stories, personal heroes, and dream movie castings.
Honor Frost (1917-2010)
Frost fitted herself out with an improvised breathing hose at a party in order to explore a 17th-century well.
James ‘Athenian’ Stuart
The first volume of The Antiquities of Athens and Other Monuments of Greece (1762) had an impressive 500 subscribers, but its influence was most strongly felt only in the early 19th century, when Greek Revival became the dominant style of British architecture.
Was Nero really a goodie?
His talents may have been limited and he may have been fundamentally lazy: but was he bad? Could we not say that he made the best use of his limited talents – and the empire flourished?
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