Greek myths of the Amazons blended kernels of truth with male fantasy to create a legend that has lasted for millennia.

Cleopatra persuaded Mark Antony to order the execution of her sister Arsinoe IV on the steps of one of antiquity’s greatest temples, breaking the sacred law of sanctuary and leaving behind a mystery t ...

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The Australian drama returns for a third and final series. Set in 1989 and featuring plots set against the backdrop of major news stories, it finds TV journalists Helen Orville and Dale Jennings ...

With the benefit of hindsight, it seems odd that anyone in Britain would have wanted to make friends with Adolf Hitler, the most recognisable face of evil in the 20th century. But in the 1930s, many ...

Cosimo de' Medici (later known as Cosimo the Elder) was, according to Pope Pius II, “king in all but name” of Florence. This was not entirely a compliment: like Pius's home city of Siena (a Tuscan ...

The Roman empire was by no means the largest in history: in fact 25 others have occupied a larger land mass either before or since. Yet very few can boast as wide-reaching an influence and impact. At ...

So, you’re a person living in the medieval period and you find yourself on the wrong side of the law, or simply on the wrong side of the powerful. What worries you most: being locked up in a cell, ...

What did the samurai of Japan actually do? It’s a simple question, but one that is surprisingly hard to answer. In the first stages of the samurai era, from the 12th century and up to the late 15th ...

John of Gaunt. “What name on the roll of English princes is more familiar?” wrote Sydney Armitage-Smith, Gaunt’s first biographer, in 1904. John of Gaunt is still as familiar in our collective ...

This was “the real inner sanctum of royal life, where only very few courtiers were allowed to be,” says Ellis. “The bedchamber was somewhere where everybody wanted to be if they wanted to get ahead.” ...