WRITER & HISTORIAN
A couple of weeks ago I was invited to contribute a brief film to the A Bit Lit YouTube channel, created by Andy Kesson and others as a forum for thoughts on literature, history and culture during lockdown. So here I am, talking about freedom and confinement, about emotional and spiritual spaces, about monasticism and... Continue Reading →
We don’t know his real name. In ancient inscriptions it appears as Yhw, Yhwh, or simply Yh; but because Hebrew used a script which elided vowel sounds we don’t know how his earliest followers might have said it. He has come to be known as Yahweh, but Yaho, Yahu or Yah are also possibilities. Perhaps... Continue Reading →
Would Mary Shelley have conceived of Frankenstein without the work of Italian scientist Luigi Galvani? Looking back at its creation, she recalled long conversations with Lord Byron and her husband about Galvani’s ideas. “Perhaps a corpse would be re-animated,” she wrote. “Galvanism had given token of such things.” Galvani’s great breakthrough had come on 20... Continue Reading →
The way George Soper told it, it might have been a case for Sherlock Holmes. “The typhoid epidemic that broke out in the Summer home of Mr George Thompson at Oyster Bay was a puzzling affair,” he told the New York Times. It was 1906 and typhoid was rampant in the city; nearly 700 died... Continue Reading →
I'm absolutely delighted to have a new poem, The Pleiades, in the latest issue of Reliquae, from the Corbel Stone Press. It's one of my favourite poetry publications – beautifully produced and full of wonderful writing, much of it in translation – so it feels a real privilege to appear in it.
What’s in a name? Antwerp, it was said, derived from the words werpen and hand, meaning ‘throwing’ and ‘hand’. In this telling, a Roman soldier named Brabo cut off the hand of a giant, Druon Antigon, who stood on the banks of the Scheldt and demanded payment of a toll. Even in its foundation myth,... Continue Reading →
By 216BC, Hannibal’s Carthaginian army in the Second Punic War had already won victories against the Romans at Trebia and Lake Trasimene. But then came Cannae. According to Polybius, the Senate, terrified by Hannibal’s successes, sent eight legions against him. It was an unprecedentedly large force: some 80,000 foot soldiers and 6,000 cavalry. It’s possible... Continue Reading →
Down the centuries Jewish people have been blamed for everything from the Black Death to the Russian Revolution. But rarely has such race hate found more cogent expression than in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The Protocols purports to be the verbatim transcript of speeches made by a secret council of Jewish leaders... Continue Reading →
It’s 1966 and 10-year-old Taeko has failed a maths test. Her mother, washing dishes in the kitchen, asks one of Taeko’s older sisters to help. The sister is horrified. “Is she alright in the head?” she asks. “Normally this is easy.” “But that child’s not normal,” her mother says, just as Taeko comes downstairs into... Continue Reading →
Really pleased to have a poem in the latest issue of Drawn to the Light.
Amelia Earhart, aged 40, disappeared with her plane and her navigator on 2 July 1937 on the longest leg on what was intended to be the first circumnavigation of the world by a woman in an airplane. How does that fact change how we read her life? She was, her high-school yearbook said, “the girl... Continue Reading →
In the late afternoon of 26 July 1533, Atahualpa, last true emperor of the Incas, was led out into the public square of Cajamarca a city in the Andean highlands, now in northern Peru. His conquistador captors, led by Francisco Pizarro, had just decided he must die. During the nine months or so of his... Continue Reading →
I'm delighted to have been elected as a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. As someone outside the academy, it means a lot. Huge thanks are due to the society's president, Emma Griffin, for her support and encouragement. It would never have occurred to me that I might be eligible.
Gone with the Wind, the 1939 film adaptation of Margaret Mitchell’s novel – which, to say the least, valorises the antebellum South – was always controversial. When producer David O Selznick announced the production, his decision was widely condemned by civil-rights organisations such as the NAACP. African-American actors who took roles in the film were... Continue Reading →
The northern diaspora we call the age of the Vikings is testament to the mobility of early medieval Europe. So too is the fact that the most contemporary account we have of the viking raid on Lindisfarne of 8 June 793 comes from the court of Charlemagne in faraway Aachen. Alcuin, a Northumbrian monk and... Continue Reading →
The problem with theosophy, WB Yeats said, was that its followers wanted to turn a good philosophy into a bad religion. Its founder, Madame Blavatsky, seems to have agreed. “There are about half a dozen real theosophists in the world,” she told the poet. “And one of those is stupid.” Whatever Blavatsky herself could be... Continue Reading →
The Nuremberg trials that followed the close of World War II were, like the atrocities they prosecuted, unprecedented in international law. And yet the idea that political and military leaders might be held accountable for their actions was not entirely new. Cases cited in the trials themselves included the actions of the Imperial Diet at... Continue Reading →
Cloud islands, they are called. The peaks of the Usumbara Mountains in Tanzania rise so high that fogs form on their slopes where the cool mountain air meets warmer currents rising off the sea. The climate has created a unique ecosystem, as real islands do, and much of the wildlife is unique to the area.... Continue Reading →
Thanks to lockdown, sales of jigsaw puzzles grew nearly 40% in 2020, reaching £100 million for the first time. It’s a far cry from the puzzle’s humble origin in a printmakers shop just off Drury Lane. The concept of children’s publishing was slowly emerging in the 18th century, with much of its focus on education... Continue Reading →
Even at the very beginning, their affair was barely private. He joked about it in his lectures and wrote love songs about her that were sung far and wide. But they were both, in their own way, already famous. By the 1110s, Peter Abelard was in his thirties, with a fast-growing reputation as a philosopher... Continue Reading →
The first note known to have sounded on Earth was an E natural. It was produced some 165 million years ago by a katydid, a kind of cricket, rubbing its wings together – a fact deduced by scientists from the insect’s remains, preserved in amber. Consider too the love life of the mosquito. When a male... Continue Reading →
Mathew Lyons 