A global history of free speech, from the ancient world to today.Hailed as the “first freedom,” free speech is the bedrock of democracy. But it is a challenging principle, s...
Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) is the great lost scientist - more things are named after him than anyone else. There are towns, rivers, mountain ranges, the ocean current that runs along the So...
Bill Cunningham’s first love was fashion but the big city came a close second. He left for New York aged nineteen, losing his family’s support but enjoying the infinite luxury of freedo...
ME/CFS affects an estimated 250,000 people in the UK, roughly 3 in every 1,000 people. Chronic Fatigue conditions are some of the most frustrating and life-altering conditions to suffer from, so wh...
Everything you think you know about war is wrong. War is timeless. Some things change - weapons, tactics, leadership - but our desire to go into battle does not. We are in the midst o...
From Brexit, to Donald Trump, to extremist parties in Europe and the developing world, populism has dominated recent headlines.But what explains the rise of leaders who stoke nationalis...
The extraordinary untold story of how technological change has shaped our history and determined who wins and who loses the rewards of prosperity.Throughout history, technol...
In The Best Minds of My Generation Ginsberg gives us the convoluted origin story of the 'Beat' idea. Amongst anecdotes of meeting Kerouac, Burroughs and other figures for the first time, Ginsberg e...
When Kapka Kassabova was a child, the borderzone between Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece was rumoured to be an easier crossing point into the West than the Berlin Wall so it swarmed with soldiers, spie...
From the German occupation of Belgium in May 1940, Flemish recruits from northern Belgium - considered by the Nazis to be 'Germanic' - were accepted individually into Waffen-SS units. From Hitler's...
In Lost and Founder Fishkin reveals the mostly awful, sometimes awesome truth about startup culture with the transparency and humour that his hundreds of thousands of blog readers ha...
'Funny, angry, urgent. Ghodsee is going to start a revolution' Daisy Buchanan, author of The SisterhoodA witty, fiercely intelligent exploration of why capitalism is rigged against wome...
'I was thinking; my mind was running at top speed, scanning and sorting my options. They ranged all the way from Dumb and Dangerous to Crazy, Evil, and utterly wrong from the start . . . stand back...
With exclusive interviews and insight from drivers and a wealth of F1 insiders, award-winning sportswriter Malcolm Folley goes behind the scenes to discover what it's really like to drive and live ...
In the 1980s, Queen were the only band I ever saw who made me laugh for the right reasons. Other groups and lead singers took themselves too seriously. Queen and Freddie Mercury were the exception....
Meet Grace Hopper: the woman who revolutionized computer coding. She coined the term "computer bug" and taught computers to "speak English". An ace inventor and groundbreaker, G...
Love’s got everything to do with it.Tina Turner is the Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll, a musical icon celebrating her 60th year in the industry. In this dramatic autobiography...
From prescription medicines and alcohol to cocaine and cannabis, the use of drugs has reached an unprecedented high. We have always sought to alter our moods and relieve pain, so why today are some...
‘Where can the human animal seek its energy in this era of lockdowns and social distancing? Dodge may help us to find out’ Guardian‘If you’re a fan of Maggie Nel...
In December 1888, Vincent van Gogh cut off his ear. It is the most famous story about any artist in history. But what really happened on that dark winter night? In Van Gogh’s Ear, Bernadette ...