Journalism

Jesus and the dinosaurs are living happily alongside one another in a town in Canada – but can the peace last, asks Tom Holland. Drumheller is definitely the place to visit if you like dinosaurs. […]

You wouldn’t know it from Jurassic World, but tyrannosaurs had coats of fuzz and the same molecular structure as a hen. Forget about cloning dinosaurs, writes the historian Tom Holland. They’re still us — they’re […]

They made the Victorians shudder with awe, but before long dinosaurs were loved mostly by cartoonists and children. Then came a series of discoveries that began a dazzling chapter in the history of science and […]

It is hard to think of a more remarkable bargain than “Misty”, the diplodocus that went under the hammer this week for £400,000. The chance to own a 17-metre dinosaur does not come along every […]

Byron’s memoirs were burnt by friends terrified of what they might contain. Ever since, biographers have been trying to make up for the loss. The attractions of the challenge are obvious. Not only was Byron […]

Celebrities, we have it on good authority, are like candles in the wind. As it is the nature of candles to illumine what would otherwise be dark, this means that within every biography of a […]

Considering the habitual British distaste for foreigners and learning musical instruments, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin was a brave title for a novel. But Louis de Bernieres clearly knew what he was doing: four years after its […]

Read the full article on the Financial Times website [paywall]

The Tarbat Peninsula, a spit of land sticking out from the northernmost Scottish Highlands, seems an unlikely spot for a revolution. At its tip stands a lighthouse, built by Robert Louis Stevenson’s uncle back in […]

As the first decade of the third Christian millennium draws to an increasingly troubled close, the verdict of historians on its significance can already be anticipated. Two themes will predominate. The first, exemplified by the […]

To the Byzantines, the lands of the distant north were self-evidently hellish. So terrible were the winters that even wolves, when they crossed the frozen seas, were reported to go blind with the cold. Unsurprisingly, […]

‘Roman Britain,’ I asked a friend of mine, a committed pacifist and the veteran of endless marches against the war in Iraq, ‘a Good or Bad Thing?’ ‘Oh, good,’ my friend answered, not even deigning […]