History

Douglas Haig’s willingness to trade thousands of lives for a few miles of ground has proved sadly durable

The photographer documented a city’s outsiders with wit and tenderness

Tari Lang’s memoir discusses growing up under Indonesia's military dictatorship while much of society carried on as normal

Some words have two unconnected meanings – others have simply drifted apart

The architects of the Constitution drew it up to restrain men exactly like Donald Trump. He’s a scar on the July 4 celebrations

Revolution is the national myth of the US. But another country’s quieter history shows its importance may be overstated

With guns, grenades, flamethrowers and sabotage training, the Home Guard were no laughing matter

Exploring sporting polysemy – the cases where a single word has several different, even if often related, meanings

There’s a guide for how politicians can achieve economic and social progress. It’s right there in the history books

The pleasure dome and sacred river were opium fantasies – but it was a place where the world met to trade

A list of Hitler’s party members is now searchable – but files that might embarrass the postwar elite remain stubbornly out of reach

The traitor was driven by Marxist beliefs, a snobbish desire for dominance – but also a deadly naivety

Only 34 people alive are in the most exclusive club on the planet. One photographer set out to track them down

A new exhibition puts the wartime prime minister’s work on show for the first time in 50 years

The damage from online shopping was bad enough – but now a new threat has emerged

The curious history of language purists hating ‘mongrel’ words

Visit the place where Joan Baez and Jane Fonda heard the Vietnam war bombs fall

Why were the heads of the FBI and CIA calling a Manhattan wine salesman on the morning of 9/11?

French Protestants came in search of religious freedom. Then the Glorious Revolution changed everything

A capital built and rebuilt by dreamers, schemers and evildoers has gone from squalor to a hollowed-out paradise

Howl dials down the tirades for sorrowful soul-searching and reasoned debate

Once the world’s tallest mountain had been scaled, they all wanted to know: Who stepped on the summit first?

Donald Trump wants to build a 250-foot monstrosity in Washington DC. Where could he have got that idea?

A cataract operation left me with pseudophakia – the happy condition of having an artificial lens

The new £1bn landmark is a startling attraction. But it’s the old place – shorn of its most famous treasure – that now really glitters

Conspiracy theorists say a man in a black cap must be part of the plot to kill a president. But the truth is likely to be very different

The Estonian artist thought the French masters were ‘hideous’ and ‘boring’. How does his own work measure up?

A new crop of video games is educating players about cultural looting and the pain inflicted by western colonialism

In countries like Britain with no strong baby naming traditions, Lily, Ivy and Elsie can disappear for decades before returning to popularity

The Israeli government is justifying its territorial expansion using ancient historical finds. Around East Jerusalem, whole Palestinian neighbourhoods are vanishing

A new exhibition celebrates the absurd brilliance of designer Elsa Schiaparelli, creator of the shoe hat and the skeleton dress

Before Google Maps, travellers had to rely on guides and phrasebooks that mixed useful advice with imperial arrogance and surreal oddities