A personal reflection on Julius Caesar and the conquest of Britain Julius Caesar always brings to mind the famous dictum of Winston Churchill, ‘History will be kind to me, for I shall write it!' In his writings Julius Caesar provides a vivid and detailed account of his invasions of Britain in...

One of the gifts of the social sciences to history is the use of expository diagrams; but attention is rarely given to the history of diagrams. Maps - schematized representations of locations in spatial relation to one another - can be dated back to Babylonia in the late third millennium...

Public Museums, National Trust Properties and private homes across the UK contain thousands of antiquities deriving from the ancient Greek world. Many of these were obtained by those who ventured upon the Grand Tour, a cultural expedition to Europe undertaken by wealthy young men in the eighteenth and ninteteenth centuries. In...

History Abridged: This feature seeks to take a person, event or period and abridge, or focus on, an important event or detail that can get lost in the big picture. See all History Abridged articles Towards the end of the Bronze Age, the climate across Europe began to warm. This...

History Abridged: This feature seeks to take a person, event or period and abridge, or focus on, an important event or detail that can get lost in the big picture. Think Horrible Histories for grownups (without the songs and music). See all History Abridged articles One of the oldest cities...

"How can there be a true history, when we see no man living is able to write truly the history of the last week?" (Thomas Shadwell) Indeed! Once when I had to give a talk in Spain, I found this quotation by looking up ‘history' in the Oxford English Dictionary....

This classic pamphlet takes you through some of the key ideas on the shape, size and movements of the Earth as they changed over time from classical cosmology to the work of Galileo and Isaac Newton.

In this podcast Dr Fiona Hobden of the University of Liverpool looks at what Greek myths and legends can tell us about how the early ancient Greeks saw their world.

In this series of podcasts Professor Peter Heather of King's College London looks at the history of the Goths, the Huns, the division of the Roman Empire and the fall of the Roman Empire.

In this set of podcasts Professor Mark Humphries of the University of Swansea discusses the life and significance of both St Peter and Constantine the Great, focusing on their roles in the development of Christianity in the Roman Empire.

In this series of podcasts Dr Federico Santangelo of the University of Newcastle looks at the rise and fall of the Roman Republic.

In this series of podcasts Dr Richard Hawley of Royal Holloway, University of London looks at the history of women in Ancient Greece and Rome.

In this podcast Dr Fiona Hobden of the University of Liverpool discusses what Greek tragedy and comedy tell us about the society of Ancient Greece and what has been the legacy of the great writers of this period.

In this podcast Dr Emma-Jayne Graham and Professor Helen King of the Open University discuss how Christianity became the dominant religion of the Roman world.

In this podcast Dr Joanna Paul & Dr Paula James of the Open University discuss the role and significance of the Latin Poets in Roman society.

In this podcast Dr Emma-Jayne Graham and Dr Ursula Rothe of the Open University examine Roman Imperial Society.

In this podcast Dr Conrad Leyser of Worcester College, University of Oxford, looks at the life, ideas and significance of St Augustine of Hippo (354-430 AD).

In this webinar, Jane Draycott shares her research on prostheses and assistive technology in ancient Greece, Rome and the neighbouring civilisations. She outlines the findings from her 2023 book on this subject, which arose from a grant to visit museums around the UK to access surviving ancient prostheses and modern...

The Government of the Roman Empire, as everyone knows, was autocratic, and, like all autocracies, it was ‘tempered by assassination' or by military revolution. The emperor ruled through an imperial service, at once civil and military, in which several grades, corresponding to the social classes of the empire, were always...

We can do all kinds of things with the past - examine it analytically, or question whether it ever existed, or churn it up inside ourselves until it turns into personal experience. We can dream it as we lounge amidst a heap of ruins, or petrify it into a museum;...