DISCOVER BRITAIN MAGAZINE (OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2023 – The latest issue features Eastern delights – From punting in Cambridge to crabbing in Norfolk; Bloody Mary – Where England’s first Queen was proclaimed; London pubs – Perfectly pulled pints; Holkham Hall – Behind the scenes on the vast estate, and more…
In this insightful documentary we are shown how Shakespeare knew the importance of not just reflecting the lives of the kings and queens who peppered his plays, but ordinary people too – including thieves, clowns and prostitutes.
Watch Simon Schama’s Shakespeare and Us on BBC Select in the US: https://bit.ly/49bpdiK and Canada: https://bit.ly/45WLLAX
Getting to zero carbon emissions won’t save the world. We’ll have to also remove carbon from the air—a massive undertaking unlike anything we’ve ever done.
BY SAM HOWE VERHOVEK
Over the past few centuries, we have dug, chopped, burned, drilled, pumped, stripped, forged, flared, lit, launched, driven, and flown our way to adding 2.4 trillion metric tons of carbon dioxide to Earth’s atmosphere.
That’s as much CO2 as would be emitted annually by 522 billion cars, or 65 cars per person living today.
On a lonely, lunar-like valley 20 miles outside of Reykjavík, Iceland, Edda Aradóttir is on a mission to put it back where it came from.
Shimmery. Spiky. Shaggy. Soft. Feathers are what make birds so alluring—but these photographs remind us that they also tell a story about the science of evolution.
BY ANNIE ROTH
PHOTOGRAPHS BY HEIDI AND HANS-JÜRGEN KOCH
In 1860 Charles Darwin wrote, “The sight of a feather in a peacock’s tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me sick!” The plumes were so extravagant, he surmised, they could be a hindrance to survival. Darwin’s frustration with their seemingly inexplicable elegance eventually led him to the idea of sexual selection. Although this form of natural selection—driven by the preference of one sex for certain characteristics in individuals of the other sex—is well understood today, a peacock’s feather can still hold mystery for its viewers, says Heidi Koch. She and her husband, Hans-Jürgen, have spent the past few years photographing feathers in all their glorious detail.
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Anthropologist Zelia Nuttall traveled the globe, decoded the Aztec calendar and transformed the way we think of ancient Mesoamerica
On a bright day early in 1885, Zelia Nuttall was strolling around the ancient ruins of Teotihuacán, the enormous ceremonial site north of Mexico City. Not yet 30, Zelia had a deep interest in the history of Mexico, and now, with her marriage in ruins and her future uncertain, she was on a trip with her mother, Magdalena; her brother George; and her 3-year-old daughter, Nadine, to distract her from her worries.
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After 50 years, U.S. veterans commemorate their release from a notorious Vietnamese prison
In March of this year, I followed retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Robert Certain through the entryway of the former Hoa Lo Prison in Hanoi. French colonists built the prison in the 19th century, calling it the Maison Centrale and using it to imprison and behead Vietnamese dissidents. During the Vietnam War, American prisoners facetiously called it the Hanoi Hilton. For the first time in 50 years, Certain was about to step inside the notorious compound where he’d been held, interrogated and beaten.
Ramus calls the building a “mystery box” as the theater’s 3 auditoria ingeniously extend and combine to create over 62 stage-audience configurations, resulting in a different space each time you visit. But what makes this building so special is revealed at dusk when the chandeliers shine through its 5,000 marble tile exterior, causing it to glow.
As this unique space finally opens its doors, the ultimate hope for Perelman is to inspire artists to create profound work–in turn inspiring the public.
HISTORY TODAY MAGAZINE (NOVEMBER 2023) – This issue features The murder John F. Kennedy 60 years on, the dirty secrets of medieval monks, what the Nazis learnt from the Beer Hall Putsch, Christianity’s bloody history in Japan, and deaf expression in Renaissance art.
Was it the mob? A coup? Cuban dissidents? War hawks? 60 years after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the theories are still debated. Do any of them hold up?
In the aftermath of the Munich Beer Hall Putsch of November 1923, Hitler was in prison and the Nazi Party banned. But its failure taught him valuable lessons.
Repulsive revelations of bodily infestations were viewed by some in medieval Europe as proof of sanctity. But for most, parasites were just plain disgusting.
Confinement: The Hidden History of Maternal Bodies in Nineteenth-Century Britain by Jessica Cox looks at the engine of the Victorian population boom: motherhood.
German poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1913)
Teetering at the edge of the Tajo river gorge, Ronda, 90 minutes’ drive west from Malaga, remains the most spectacular urban setting in Europe. Its cat’s cradle of white streets is haunted by the ghosts of Moorish princes, soundtracked by the strum of guitars and the tinkle of fountains.
If you’re in the mood for romance, nowhere in Spain comes close, Ernest Hemingway reckoned. He’s still right, so long as you’re happy to share your precious moment with massed day-trippers from the Costa del Sol. Expect visitor numbers to grow again when a £1.1 million suspended gorge walk, the Camino del Desfiladero del Tajo designed by the architect behind Malaga’s Caminito del Rey, opens later this year.
Even so, what everyone is really coming to Ronda for – to inland Andalusia – is Old Spain. You won’t find it written on signposts but, like the crackle of duende during a flamenco concert, you’ll know it when you experience it. It’s the country of pueblos blancos and half-remembered battles and scenery of savage beauty; the one that attracted Grand Tour visitors such as Disraeli and Irving long before anyone had thought of the Costa del Sol.
Archaeology Magazine (November/December – 2023):
4,000-year-old cuneiform tablets illuminate the personal lives of Mesopotamian businesswomen
By DURRIE BOUSCAREN
Excavations at the ancient Anatolian city of Kanesh in Turkey have revealed a district where merchants from the distant Mesopotamian city of Assur in Iraq lived and worked. Some 23,000 cuneiform tablets, mostly dating from about 1900 to 1840 B.C., have been found in the merchants’ personal archives in Kanesh.
The parents of an Assyrian woman named Zizizi were furious. Like many of their neighbors’ children, their daughter had dutifully wed an Assyrian merchant. Sometime around the year 1860 B.C., she had traveled with him to the faraway Anatolian city of Kanesh in modern-day Turkey, where he traded textiles. But her husband passed away and, instead of returning to her family, Zizizi chose to marry a local.
Excavations in Sichuan Province reveal the lost treasure of an infamous seventeenth-century warlord
A Roman noblewoman’s devotion to Isis outlasted even an emperor’s ban on foreign cults
Around 55,000 years ago, a resourceful band of modern humans made a home in southern France
Investigating the mythic origins of the Roman Empire’s ultimate adversary
ICELAND REVIEW MAGAZINE (OCT/NOV 2023): The latest issue features ‘Island In The Making’ – A Scientific Expedition of Surtsey Island; Mycological Magic – Foraging with Iceland’s Mushroom Queen, and more…
HISTORY TODAY MAGAZINE (OCTOBER 2023) – This issue features Turkey and the end of the Ottomans; When Inca mummies came to Europe; How Henry II survived the Great Rebellion, and more…
The Republic of Turkey is 100 years old. Built on the ashes of an old empire, what place is there for the Ottoman past in the secular state?
As new crimes are committed, new laws must be written to punish them. When it comes to crimes committed by states like Putin’s Russia, who decides?
In 1173 the Angevin empire looked set to fall, facing rebellion on all sides. Against incredible odds Henry II won a decisive victory, silencing kings, lords – and his own children.
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