What was it like to live in the Roman Ghetto under the shadow of papal authority? Using historical maps and personal testimony, Ariana Ellis recounts the story of Anna del Monte, a young Jewish woman who was subject to forcible removal and conversion in 1749.
Is Maggi Hambling’s ‘A Sculpture for Mary Wollstonecraft’ attuned to the intellectual accomplishments of the woman it was created for, or to the particular struggles of women in the present? Vic Clarke investigates.
The opening stages of the French Revolution helped generate widespread enthusiasm for reform in Britain. It did so especially amongst a group of intellectual and literary women and men who contributed to the emerging ‘revolution controversy’ in pamphlets, poetry and novels and were bonded together by acquaintance and friendship in an increasingly febrile political atmosphere.
Matthew McCormack sets the UK government’s response to Coronavirus in historic context, shedding some light on British responses to the Coronavirus pandemic, in contrast with the responses from other parts of the world.
Complicated and often conflicted responses to sex workers who become victims of violence is by no means new, and is not limited to police and the courts. If we look at evidence from earlier centuries it is clear that both social and legal responses often had little to do with the legality of sex work, and far more to do with attitudes towards women’s sexual reputations.
Historian Karen Harvey on the hidden symbolism of rabbits and women’s bodies in The Favourite, and the real-life case of eighteenth-century mother Mary Toft.
What can history tell us about the politics of monetary innovations like cryptocurrencies? Rebecca Spang looks back to the era of the French Revolution to explore “billets de confidence” – local, decentralised bills of exchange.
