Europe

‘You are seeking many things of me who am exceedingly busy, and you send a messenger who presses me too much at his own pleasure’. Writing in 1076, it is unsurprising that Pope Gregory VII

In April 1961, a reader named Victor de Blancpré sent a letter to François Cavanna, founder and editor-in-chief of Hara Kiri magazine and Charlie Hebdo, saying: ‘Never have I read such a heap of insanity

Coronations in post-war Europe have not generally been key events in fundamental political transformations. But forty-three years ago today, one country witnessed exactly such a coronation. On 22 November 1975, Spain stood at a historical

Mushroom clouds in burning skies, wandering skulls, and thousands of people confined in atomic shelters as insects: the final decade of the Cold War brought a global proliferation of visual expressions of the anxiety of

I struggle with memorial days. I can’t help thinking that they make little impact on the notion of memorialism, and before you know it we’ve all moved on without giving a second thought to the

It is more than seventy years since the first publication of the first Dutch version of Anne Frank’s diary appeared in print. It was followed by both English and American editions in 1952 and subsequently