In the first part of our series examining the transition from World War to Cold War, Taylor Downing looks at how the end of the fighting in 1945 sowed the seeds of the conflict to come; while in the second part he explains how the defeat of the Nazis brought new division to the Austrian capital.
In the third part of our series marking the 80th anniversary of World War II’s final months, Taylor Downing asks whether the Allied Supreme Commander was correct in allowing the Russians to capture the German capital.
Stephen Roberts analyses the crucial battle that cost the life of the Swedish king.
Svante Pääbo is the second member of his family to be elected a Nobel laureate: his father, Sune Bergström (1916-2004) shared the same Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1982. Is there a gene, one wonders, for Nobel-Prize-winning science?
REVIEW BY DAVID PORTER This is a hefty (913 pages!) study, which is not restricted to ‘modern’ Germany but extends to cover the military history of Switzerland and the Holy Roman/Austrian/Austro-Hungarian empires. (The author makes the point that national identity…
REVIEW BY TAYLOR DOWNING Ben Macintyre is well known for his books on spies and espionage, like Agent Zigzag, Double Cross, and Philby. Earlier this year, one of his other works, Operation Mincemeat, was adapted into a hugely successful movie…
The 2022 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Svante Pääbo for his discoveries concerning the genomes of extinct hominins and human evolution.
For many years, a life-sized, anatomically accurate and skilfully carved skull of white Carrara marble was on display at Schloss Pillnitz, a castle in Germany. Its artist was unknown.
Over the last decade, developments in genetic sequencing, as well as in the successful extraction of DNA from increasingly older and even contaminated remains, have allowed our knowledge of ancient hominins to expand exponentially. But even with these advances, our…