Reading time: 2 minutes
A look at Crusaders: The Epic History of the Wars for the Holy Lands, by Dan Jones – A major new history of the Crusades with an unprecedented wide scope, told in a tableau of portraits of people on all sides of the wars, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Templars.
Reading time: 5 minutes
Prior to the Romans, Greece was the only part of Europe to have had toilets. But by the peak of the Roman Empire in the 3rd century AD, the Romans had introduced sanitation to much of their domain, stretching across western and southern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. Their impressive technologies included large multi-seat public latrines, sewers, clean water in aqueducts, elegant public baths for washing, and laws that required towns to remove waste from the streets. But how effective were these measures in improving the health of the population?
Reading time: 9 minutes
In the pantheon of Western classical music an esteemed list of names has captured the admiration and attention of the public for centuries. From the Baroque masters of Bach and Handel, the classical giants of Beethoven and Haydn, and the romantic poets of Chopin and Liszt, much of society’s collective fascination with these composers has extended far beyond just their musical creations. Who were they and how did they write such exquisite melodies? In attempting to learn more about the lives of these men who continue to move so many around the world, personal portraits emerge of seemingly ordinary beings. An ordinariness that vanished when pen was put to paper, and a musical sublimeness was born.
Reading time: 2 minutes
What happened to art in the great Age of Discovery when civilisations encountered each other for the first time? A look at the book Civilisations: First Contact / The Cult of Progress, by David Olusoga.
Reading time: 8 minutes
The Victorian era was an amazing time for inventive activity. Advances in technology, science and industry brought change to all areas. One setting that provided endless inspiration for Victorian inventors was their homes. As it took on new forms and functions in the wake of rapid social change, the Victorian home sparked ideas for an array of creative inventions attempting to improve the domestic experience.
Reading time: 5 minutes
It is not the presence of convicts that matters, but the drastic distortion in the ratio of men to women that came with it. Convict men outnumbered convict women by roughly six to one. These numbers were even more skewed at the start of settlement. Convicts were joined by free migrants, especially in the second half of the 19th century, whose numbers also skewed heavily male. The ratio of men to women was consistently skewed in favour of males in Australia until the start of the first world war.
“Blood on the River: A Chronicle of Mutiny and Freedom on the Wild Coast” by Marjoleine Kars: an astonishing original work of history, Blood on the River will change our understanding of revolutions, slavery and of the story of freedom in the New World.
Read More
Reading time: 5 minutes
Neanderthals were until quite recently often seen as simple-minded savages – powerful hunters with a short attention span. But in the last few years, scientists have realised that they were a lot more refined than previously thought – capable of caring for the vulnerable, burying their dead and even adorning themselves with feathers and beads.
Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet by Lyndal Roper – a magisterial new biography which goes beyond Luther’s theology to investigate the inner life of the religious reformer who has been called “the last medieval man and the first modern one.”
Read More
Reading time: 7 minutes
Levying war against the Crown was one of the key treasonable offences defined by the 1352 Treason Act. Yet, during the civil wars of the 1640s and again in the American Revolutionary War of the 1770s and 80s, those that levied war against the monarch not only avoided punishments for treason, but rejected royal authority and accused their kings of levying war – of committing treason – against the state.
Who Discovered What When? Five hundred years of great scientific discoveries by David Ellyard: an absorbing and easy-to-read book about the growth of scientific ideas and knowledge since 1500.
Read More
Reading time: 7 minutes
In the breakthrough High Court case Love and Thoms vs Commonwealth in 2020, the court ruled that First Nations people could not be considered aliens in Australia. As Justice James Edelman noted in the decision, whatever the other manners in which they were treated […] Aboriginal people were not ‘considered as foreigners in a kingdom which is their own’.
