PAST PRESENT – Readings in History

The recent Arab-Israeli conflict in Gaza, beginning on 7 October 2023, is yet another outbreak of ancient hatreds and antagonisms in The Middle East. Debate rages over whether the Israeli action can be correctly defined as genocide. Loud voices have been raised across the world in support of both Israelis and Palestinians. For a single

There can come a point in a reader’s life when the span of that life becomes history. Ian Kershaw’s (A life in writing: Ian Kershaw | History books | The Guardian and Ian Kershaw – Wikipedia) book ‘The Global Age’ covers the period 1950-2017, a time span that many will remember personally. The long shadow

We are accustomed to hearing the phrase ‘The West’ upheld as a form of civilisation superior and more morally advanced than those of other benighted parts of the globe. Usually associated with freedom and democracy, it includes Western Europe, North America, Australia, New Zealand. It is an evaluative term as much as descriptive. Its opponents

In this wonderful book William Dalrymple (Biography – William Dalrymple (en-GB)) describes the influence of the Indian subcontinent on global technology, astronomy, art, religion, music, mathematics, literature and mythology. Before The Silk Road, argues Dalrymple, came India’s ‘Golden Road’, which stretched from the Roman empire in the west all the way to Korea and Japan

Joya Chatterji FBA is Professor of South Asian History and a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. She specialises in modern South Asian history and was the editor of the journal Modern Asian Studies for ten years. Shadows at Noon is about India in the 20th century, which means taking it from the late Victorian period, when it had become an

In a statement made in 1939 about what role the Soviet Union might play in The Second World War Winston Churchill said : “I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, but perhaps there is a key”. Eighty five years later the Western world

Tom Holland (Tom Holland – About | Hachette UK (tom-holland.org)) is an award-winning historian, biographer and broadcaster. He is the author of Rubicon: The Triumph and the Tragedy of the Roman Republic (2003), which won the Hessell-Tiltman Prize for History and was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize; Persian Fire (2005), his history of the Graeco-Persian wars,