History

Digging into the detail and data to separate the noise from the news

Seventy-five years ago, western troops went into Korea and the 20th century’s forgotten war began. The brutality and suffering cost five million lives – and achieved almost nothing

The eccentric monarch’s fantastical Bavarian castles, once dismissed as kitsch, have finally gained Unesco World Heritage status

The American philosopher championed ideas that inspired the likes of Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr – as well as the protests of today

Digging into the detail and data to separate the noise from the news

The world of extremism has moved on during the past 100 years – but the core ideas of Hitler’s book have not gone away

Digging into the detail and data to separate the noise from the news

A new book reveals the former Nazis at the heart of Das Kanzleramt, the chancellor’s office, the power hub of the young German democracy

The protest band got an ecstatic welcome in Dresden, the city where a young Vladimir Putin was stationed as KGB officer

A new book of Polish short stories reveals the inventive mischievousness of the nation’s writers

A new series about the Mitford sisters gains extra poignancy in an era when extremist politics again divides families

Like many European countries, Bulgaria is facing divisions about its future

In the age of drone warfare, people in Ukraine are living a higher-tech version of the terror that struck suburban London

Trying to understand one part of European history feels like picking up a thread and realising, gradually, that it leads to an entire quilt

Israel and Iran’s long fixation has reached a tipping point. Will regime change in Tehran follow?

Italy’s blue bloods don’t have the money to maintain their historic properties – so they’re giving them away

Why did Queen Elizabeth I, in her famous speech at Tilbury in 1588, use two words with almost identical meanings to describe herself?

The Belgian is – temporarily – replacing Tintoretto in one of the Venice’s sacred spaces. But first he wants to talk about Trump

From the Pilgrims to Star Trek, every promised land ends up looking suspiciously like the one we left behind

A collection of images curated by the director tells the story of protest and resistance in Britain. But who wins and who loses is only part of the story

As the world lurches back towards nationalism and isolationism, does cosmopolitanism and its liberal philosophies have a place today?

A major exhibition in Amsterdam underscores art’s enduring power to connect cultures and bridge political divides

Richard Drax’s family built their riches on Barbados’s most infamous plantation. He says it’s all just history

How did an inquiry into the laws of nature produce a form of technology capable of annihilating civilisation?

The philosopher’s 1981 book After Virtue suggested that modern morality is fragmented and rootless – an argument that still stands today

The modest aristocrat was perhaps aware that she wasn’t the only woman who went the extra mile in the jungles of Indochina

Atheists have a simple answer: it is evidence that God doesn’t exist, while believers say the gift of human free will brings with it the possibility of doing evil

Vladimir Putin banned Aleksandr Sokurov’s Fairytale - and the director has retired in protest. But the power of what might be his final movie, assembled with found footage, cannot be dimmed

The Imperial War Museum London’s vital, deeply uncomfortable exhibition about sexual violence in conflict

After 99 years, the German authorities and the Hohenzollern family have decided to bury the hatchet

In southern Italy, the village of Agnone has been hiding a secret: since the middle ages, they have been making its church bells

The cemetery, opened by Napoleon, was unpopular at first. But then the VIPs came – followed by the ghosts