The Year the World Really Changed
What exactly was the historical significance of Nov. 9, 1989? Having spent much of the summer of that year in Berlin, I have long bitterly regretted that I was not there to join in the party the night the wall came down. I mean, what kind of an aspirant historian misses history being made?... Read more

Rebellion without a cause
Forty years on, what was 1968 all about? In the US, Vietnam was high on the agenda – but so was sex without strings. Demographics did more to liberate women and black people than demonstrations. And the proletarian police were more than happy to beat up the protesting hippie heroes. (History) Financial Times.... Read more

Born to rule: monarchy puts the success into succession
Heredity matters. All 109,000 of the baby boys born last Wednesday (yes, that's roughly how many get born every day around the world) will have inherited a Y chromosome from their fathers. But only one of these baby boys stands to inherit an imperial title and throne. Daily Telegraph.... Read more

Peace is spreading: the troubling thing is we don't really know why
Is the world becoming a more peaceful place? After a week of carnage in Iraq that may seem a rather idiotic question. And yet there is strong evidence that the amount of conflict in the world as a whole is going down. Daily Telegraph.... Read more

Birth of a nation
In the second extract from his new book about the British Empire, the author looks at how the English, through procreation, made their colonies flourish and turned entire continents white. The Times.... Read more

Why we ruled the world
The British Empire covered 25 per cent of the globe and, as the world's biggest investment banker, its influence stretched even farther. In his new book, Niall Ferguson argues that the Empire was a force for global good, and that its demise was caused less by nationalist movements than by the cost of its efforts to keep more malign imperial powers at bay. The Times.... Read more

What a swell party it was…for him
The lives of historians are generally a bore. After all, any historian worth writing about spends most of his time - like Gibbon - just scribble, scribble, scribbling. Yet Eric Hobsbawm's life is the exception that proves that rule. Daily Telegraph.... Read more