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'What a loss is the excellent Humboldt. You and Berlin will both miss him greatly,' Prince Albert wrote to his much-beloved daughter Vicky, Crown Princess of Prussia, on news of [...]

There are few better locations to resist la rentree than the wilds of Exmoor The late August heather and gorse. The hidden coves. The bracken and this year's superb crop [...]

We humour them when they suggest absurd reforms, we placate them with small material comforts, but we heave sighs of relief when they go away and leave us to our [...]

It is a truth now universally acknowledged that capitalism's most insightful philosopher is Karl Marx. For over a decade, the one time ideological ogre 'responsible' for the killing fields of [...]

The irony was delicious: Gordon Brown, Labour party leader and one-time editor of the socialist Red Paper on Scotland, and Wen Jiabao, premier of the People's Republic of China, standing [...]

IN 1933, THE BRADFORD born author and broadcaster J.B. Priestley set out upon his 'English Journey'. Leaving London along the Great Western Road, Priestley was transfixed by the never-ending sprawl [...]

'The resurgent Black Lives Matter movement in 2020 has restarted a new in-depth conversation about slavery, colonialism and structural racism, which will inevitably focus on all aspects of UK life, [...]

'Pray for us St Sebastian that we may deserve to pass through this pestilence,' reads the inscription on a 15th-century reliquary imploring the patron saint of plague victims to assist [...]

'There is no other country in the J. world, besides my own, whose way of life I like so much,' enthused the great French couturier Christian Dior. 'I love English [...]

As I write, highly educated if wholly uncivilised human beings are travelling underground, trying to kill me. But their aim is to murder more than just me, or you. Despite [...]

May was the month in which the west was won. On orders from President Jefferson, the great American pioneers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark left St Louis on 14 May [...]

The article focuses on beechwood casket at Medieval and Renaissance Galleries at the Victoria and Albert Museum in Kensington which belonged to politician Ralph Bernal. Topics disucssed include museum harried by chauvinism and iconoclasm which needs to transcend identity politics, activists which may decry neutrality and array of copper alloy weights held by the museum.

On the gently lapping shores of the Persian Gulf, in the steely shadow of the Burj Khalifa, I bump into former chief inspector of schools Sir Michael Wilshaw: I in [...]

I used to long for mid-October when I could say goodbye to the hot rooms, cold buffets, and warm white wine of party conference season. But ever since I swapped [...]

The article focuses on how ceramics are continuing to shape the city and outlines the challenges ahead and potter Josiah Wedgwood has been moulded and remoulded over the centuries by the mingling of clay and coal, flint and bone. It mentions clay is emerging from those kilns and then displayed at the 2019 British Ceramics Biennial. It also mentions Lisa Hammond and Kevin Millward aims to fill the gap left by the decline of college pottery courses.

'Are you here to seek political asylum?' asked a clever young student after my lecture at the National University of Singapore. It has certainly not been a great start to [...]

Eleanor Marx: A Life by Rachel Holmes Bloomsbury, 25 £, pp. 503, ISBN 9780747583844 Spectator Bookshop, 20.00 £ 'Curious to see Mrs Aveling addressing the enormous crowd, curious to see [...]

High Minds: the Victorians and the Birth of Modem Britain Simon Heffer Random House, 896pp, £30 Not everyone was convinced that the Great Exhibition of 1851 would work. 'An exhibition […]

In the new Labour Party, the scarlet standard is out, the Union flag in: but ministers are still confused about patriotism. In October last year, Tony Blair circulated a note [...]

Why do all politicians now need a 'narrative'? Tristram Hunt blames French intellectuals According to sympathetic accounts, the Conservative Party lost the general election because it did not have a [...]

THE WORLD FOR A SHILLING Michael Leapman Headline, 308pp, £14.99 £11.99 at www.newstatesman.co.uk (+£1 p&p) In an age when it takes six years not to build a national football stadium, [...]

Within days of the election result, Tony Blair could have made the most crucial decisions of the second term, writes Tristram Hunt The days following an election provide a decisive [...]

Tristram Hunt on how historians of Victorian England influenced George W Bush On Saturday 20 January, George W Bush will raise his hand, lock his jaw and hide his trademark [...]

Obsessed by a fear of revolution, haunted by a collapse of faith, it yet nurtured great minds, great art and a kind of socialism Although it is said Margaret Thatcher [...]

The article focuses on the transformation of the Victoria &Albert's Museum of Childhood into a protected play space called Young V&A, which aims to build cultural confidence for children in Tower Hamlets, London, England.