East India Company
How to lose an empire
The rise and fall of the Sassoon family, whose yearning for social acceptance brought titles at the cost of success
When young men headed East
The early growth of the Empire was fuelled by spices, not slaves
In the court of the Mughal emperor
Why remember the embarrassing first steps of a giant?
Debunking myths of the Great Divergence
Tirthankar Roy dismisses both nationalist tropes about evil colonialists and imperial assumptions of benevolent liberal intervention
Allsopp’s: the rebirth of the original Burton IPA
The Allsopp family has revived the original Burton IPA which made its name and fortune more than a century ago
An incredible inventory
James Stevens Curl reveals how this new release provides amazing insight into the household of a well-heeled, cultured European in late eighteenth-century India
The anarchy lacks context
Dalrymple’s Anarchy says more about about a selling machine somewhat different to the East India Company
Post-truth medicine
Gender clinics offer a charade that relies on the symbols of evidence-based medicine
There’s no good way to equal pay
You can’t beat the laws of supply and demand
How the DVSA is driving young people mad
Driving tests should be much more accessible than they are
The porn Olympics
Porn puts young men and women in a degrading race that most of them are doomed to lose — so why are athletes lending it credibility?
Plague and progress
In the 17th century, disease drove social and urban change in England
Waugh at war
Self-sacrifice, tradition and service seem to have been cast aside by today’s society
Pilot, playboy, player
This portrait of a gifted and not particularly pleasant man adds another feather to the author’s hat
Ethnic identity is fine, as long as you’re not English
In the corridors of power, every ethnic grievance is welcome — except for the concerns of the English
Athenian ambrosia
Savour a culinary renaissance in Greece
The NHS need not depend on immigration
The shortage of British trainees is the result of a political choice
Magic moments
A bomb dropped into the frightful world of mid-Victorian musical entertainment
