Josephus
A washing of hands
In 1866, the Russian historian Alexander Popov made an astonishing discovery. Leafing through a Renaissance Slavonic translation of the first-century…
Is one of history’s most rousing speeches apocryphal?
As rousing death-and-glory speeches go, it is one of the best. With a besieging Roman army only hours from storming…
Barometer
Gesture politics A royal home movie from 1933 apparently showed the future Queen, aged seven, and her mother giving a…
Vespasian vs Islamic State
As Ahmed Rashid argued last week, it is hard to see what the West is doing in the Middle East,…
Villains of the gospels
Peter Stanford is a writer on religious and ethical matters. He was for four years editor of the Catholic Herald.…
