History

But the question remains: Why was the Palace of the Soviets to be erected precisely where the Temple of Christ the Saviour had stood? (Let us add that the temple stood on extremely poor ground, porous and constantly underrun by water. It was treacherous soil for building on, pushing up the costs of construction.)

The explanation that atheism now... See more

Ashmole was born on 23 May 1617

For a millennium, rivalries between and among Byzantine noble families propelled public life, with the kind of bloody factional maneuvering that makes the Tudors look like the Waltons in comparison.

Though political power was usually a male privilege in Byzantium, a striking feature of the Byzantine tales is the prominence of women as political... See more

We also discuss, among other things: decapitated ostriches, fatal rose petals, and Mary’s robust reappraisal of Marcus Aurelius’s ‘sub-Stoic’ maundering.

According to Goethe, Byron’s poetical power eclipsed all other mortals, and he was not held back by petty morality, being possessed of a virtue of which the bourgeoisie had no conception.