In the 19th century nascent copyright law allowed brands to use fine art in their advertising. It raised prestige, sales, and controversy.

The Making of a Prehistoric Human by Peter Sahlins charts the ascent of an idea from prehistory to popular culture.

On 6 October 1802 Ludwig van Beethoven confessed his despair at the loss of his hearing in the Heiligenstadt Testament.

Love and Trouble in a Marriage of Four by Susan Pedersen wonders whether a radical relationship might offer inspiration for a ...

Wikipedia turns 25 this year. Its success was not a given and reveals much about our changing relationship with information online.

Coal merchant and concert promoter Thomas Britton passed away on 27 September 1714 after a prank went awry. T here was plenty of music in Restoration London, but for those in the know the best place ...

Four of the perpetrators were quickly arrested, although some of their accomplices managed to slip out of the country. It emerged that they were Italian nationalists, struggling to liberate their ...

Niall Ferguson's suggestion that John Maynard Keynes was concerned only with the present doesn't stand up to scrutiny, argues Paul Lay. ‘The long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the ...

Before the Spanish conquest, the history of the Aztec Empire was recorded orally and with hieroglyphs. In danger of being lost or forgotten, Indigenous historians began to write it down. In Mexico ...

Between 1714 and 1737, Robin Hood’s reputation took a beating. In criminal biography, the most popular genre of literature, Robin was portrayed as a cold-hearted killer. It is best to briefly digress, ...

Mesmerism was a short-lived phenomenon, but its most celebrated British exponent, John Elliotson, attracted large crowds, which incensed his rivals. Wendy Moore draws us into the illustrious world of ...

‘One could lose one’s faith from that picture.’ Those were the words of Fyodor Dostoevsky to his wife Anna on seeing this painting of a ‘startlingly dead’ Christ in the Swiss city of Basel in 1867.