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Academic Insights for the Thinking World
Antoine-Chrysostôme Quatremère de Quincy (1755-1849) was celebrated during his lifetime as the greatest European writer on the arts. The architect Sir John Soane admired his essay on Egyptian architecture while Hegel considered his research on ancient Greek polychromatic sculpture a masterpiece. Despite the breadth of Quatremère’s writings, today he is famous for inventing an idea […]
‘They court the notice of a future age/ Those twinkling tiny lustres of the land’. Today’s users of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography are members of the ‘future age’ that William Cowper talks of in his poem ‘On Observing Some Names Of Little Note Recorded In The Biographia Britannica’. For students, this makes the […]
I wrote a biography of John Williams, essentially, because I have loved his music since I was nine years old.
Prague is a city steeped in history, where music has long been intertwined with its cultural identity. This playlist captures that spirit, featuring compositions that reflect the grandeur of its imperial courts, the struggles of its people, and the resilience of its artists.
Two notes. Probably the most famous two-note unit of music in modern history.
When a composer has a hit song or an instantly iconic tune, it can be a blessing and a curse. That tune becomes eternally attached to you—and sometimes it can eclipse the rest of your work.
In the 1940s, the Normandie was the epitome of elegance and engineering—a French ocean liner renowned for its Art Deco splendor and unmatched luxury.
‘Where do you want to go today?’ served as the tagline for software giant Microsoft’s global marketing campaign running through the mid-1990s. The accompanying advertisements were replete with flashy images of people around the world of all ages, ethnicities, and backgrounds engaging in a diverse range of activities.
In conducting research for The Things She Carried: A Cultural History of the Purse in America, Kathleen B. Casey discovered how one everyday object—the purse—could function as a portal to the past.
How very different the bridges of the first- and second-place songs, JJ’s “Wasted Love” for Austria and Yuval Raphael’s “New Day Will Rise” for Israel, were at Eurovision 2025. And how uncannily the same. Does love survive when tested by the seas and floods threatening to inundate it? The survival of love is both denied and affirmed, threatened but still buoyed by the precarity of hope.
In the spring of 1791, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, accompanied by Jefferson’s enslaved chef James Hemings, took a road trip. In six weeks, they covered more than 900 miles, travelling through New York, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Connecticut before returning across Long Island.
One of the earliest depictions of the human form, painted on the wall of a cave in the Iberian Peninsula, seems to show a man with his middle finger extended.
Shae Washington, a Black queer Christian woman, struggled to reconcile her sexuality and her spirituality. Her church had always taught that you cannot be both Christian and queer.
“You’re not in a good position. You don’t have the cards right now. With us, you start having cards,” snapped President Trump at Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine, in a so-called negotiation at the Oval Office, broadcast globally on Friday, February 28, 2025.
As shocking as the Pearl Harbor attack had been for the Naval Academy Class of 1940, the sudden arrival of peace was nearly as disorienting. Most of the Forties, as they were known, were still only 27 years old, and the great adventure of their lives was now behind them.
Dive into ten remarkable books that illuminate the diverse and vibrant experiences of the LGBTQ+ community.
Few countries in the world have changed as dramatically as Spain has since the death of General Franco 50 years ago. Following his victory in a three-year civil war, Franco ruled as dictator for nearly four decades. His successor, King Juan Carlos, whose appointment by Franco in 1969 restored the Bourbon monarchy, abolished in 1931when […]