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WELCOME

DECEMBER 2021

THE AFTERMATH OF PARTITION

The events of a century ago had a transformative impact on Irish politics and society – and their legacy is still being felt today, writes Charles Townshend

THIS MONTH IN HISTORY

NEWS COMMENT ANNIVERSARIES

TALKING POINTS

Not much going on

Humans “wore clothes 120,000 years ago”

An artist’s impression of the clothes that may

A selection of the stories hitting the history headlines

Footprints are “oldest evidence of humans in the

We should salute a towering figure in the history of photography

A PIONEER OF PHOTOJOURNALISM

ANNIVERSARIES

DOMINIC SANDBROOK highlights events that took place in December in history

The Statute of Westminster, a cornerstone of the Commonwealth

WHY WE SHOULD REMEMBER…

LETTERS

Josiah Wedgwood as depicted in a c1770 engraving.

PRIZE CROSSWORD

Across 5 One of the most influential communist

Vikings Week

EVERYTHING YOU WANTED TO KNOW

NEXT MONTH

Christmas issue on sale 25 November 2021

MY HISTORY HERO

Children’s author and broadcaster Michael Rosen chooses

The world’s first superhero

When Alexander the Great died at the age of 32, his transformation into multicultural icon was only just beginning. Edmund Richardson chronicles the Macedonian king’s remarkable afterlife as the original global A-lister

Alexander’s global afterlife

How the Macedonian leader’s posthumous impact outstripped even his epoch-shaping empire-building

Instability is a problem that has recurred throughout the history of Afghanistan

In August, Taliban forces regained control of Afghanistan as US forces withdrew after two decades in the country. How can history help make sense of this seismic moment? We asked a panel of experts

The Original People’s Princess

Georgian Britain declared Princess Charlotte of Wales to be the country’s glory and Europe’s hope – so her untimely death horrified the nation, prompting fears the monarchy would collapse. Tracy Borman reflects on her tragic life

Q&A

A selection of historical conundrums answered by experts

NEMESIS OF THE NORMANS

Matt Lewis tells the story of Hereward the Wake, a shadowy rebel whose uprising against William the Conqueror in 1070 earned him a reputation as the archetypal English freedom fighter

Who was Hereward?

Self-serving? Hereward shown in an engraving from 1909

The road to partition

Complements the BBC Radio 4 series Breakup, which is due to air from 22 November

Tales of a fractured mind

Four centuries ago, Renaissance scholar Rober t Burton devoted much of his life to the study of melancholy. The result, writes Mary Ann Lund, was a master ful account of the fragility of the human psyche

Spades, soil and sisterhood

The 1930s was a golden age of female archaeologists, with networks of accomplished excavators and academics stretching across the globe. Rebecca Wragg Sykes introduces a cadre of pioneering “trowelblazers” who, in the face of widespread sexism, achieved huge success in the field

WORLD WIDE WEBS

In the early 20th century, many women in archaeology formed extensive networks. This diagram shows links between just a few key figures in the field

“Ghosts were taken for granted as part of everyday Mesopotamian life”

INTERVIEW / IRVING FINKEL

Faith and family

HUGH WILLMOTT recommends an authoritative re-examination of the dissolution of the monasteries that promises to become the standard reference work on the subject

AUTHORS ON THE PODCAST

Marie Favereau on the legacy of the Mongol empire

Buried treasure

EMMA GRIFFIN enjoys a new examination of the role of coal in shaping centuries of Britain’s history, by one of the nation’s most popular writers and presenters

Shades of meaning

JOAD RAYMOND on a look at the ways in which humanity has used colour to make sense of the world

The Red Monarch

Bella Ellis on the latest in her series that casts the Brontë sisters as detectives

Continental divide

MARTIN MEREDITH considers a book that chronicles the stories of African nations on the cusp of independence – and the role of foreign actors in determining their futures

An intimate history

The Fires of Lust: Sex in the Middle

Any questions?

Ask a Historian by Greg Jenner W&N, 352

ALSO ON THE BOOKSHELF

EUROPE The Burgundians: A Vanished Empire by Bart

ENCOUNTERS

DIARY: VISIT / WATCH / LISTEN / TASTE By Jonathan Wright, Samantha Nott and Rhiannon Davies 90 EXPLORE… Imperial War Museum London

Imperial ghosts

We live in a time when the question

Ancient cultures

A painted Peruvian vessel topped with a deer

Paris noir

Police inspector Antoine Jouin investigates gruesome crimes in

Back-breaking work

A female worker at Tredegar in the late

“Jane Goodall didn’t see chimpanzees as numbered experiments – she individualised the animal world”

Playwright SARAH WOODS (left) tells us about her

Scenes from a doomed marriage

Sandringham, December 1991. The relationship between Diana and

Creation stories

Kristen Stewart’s Princess Diana endures a terrible Christmas

Blood on the streets

Police arrest a protester at the battle of

Triumph against the odds

The life of Margaret Beaufort (pictured below) almost

Never forgotten

A century ago, in 1921, the Royal British

War of the world

Imperial War Museum London has opened new galleries dedicated to two of the most traumatic events in human history – the Second World War and the Holocaust. We sent the historian KEITH LOWE along to explore the two exhibitions before they opened to the public