If you ever find yourself romanticising the glitzy outlaws of the 1920s, spare a thought for Arthur Barry, a polite burglar whose life...

Long before we had celebrity voices telling us when to take the next left or warning us about average speed cameras, drivers had to rely...

Most career criminals make headlines for their violence or brash defiance. Jeffrey Manchester, however, earned his notoriety by being unfailingly polite, oddly considerate, and for living in places most people would never dream of calling home. Nicknamed “Roofman” by baffled detectives, Manchester’s story is a study in improbable break-ins, makeshift hideouts, and a charm that left even his victims scratching their heads. From Schoolboy to Soldier Jeffrey Manchester grew up i

‘He was young and handsome…his mother’s hope.’ He was young and handsome, his mother’s pride and joy, but he died in torment, blind, sick...

On 21 June 1675, a foundation stone was quietly laid in the heart of London, an unassuming act that would, over centuries, come to...

Imagine sitting in a dingy consulting room sometime around 1900. You’ve come to see a doctor because your skin has erupted in angry sores, your joints ache unbearably, and there’s a constant buzzing in your ears. The diagnosis, whispered with discomfort, is syphilis. There is no easy cure, no guarantee of recovery, and the treatment itself might kill you faster than the disease. This was once the grim reality for millions. Long before the humble penicillin mould transformed

ROCKY (1978) by Edward Lutczyn If you’ve ever stood in a cinema queue staring at the same old posters — moody close-ups, explosions...

In 1936 and 1937, Picasso and a circle of surrealists gathered at the Hotel Vaste Horizon in Mougins. What followed was Guernica, a historic Harper's Bazaar cover, and some of the most important photography of the 20th century. The women did most of it.

In the autumn of 1998, a tragic act of violence in suburban New York captured the growing tension at the heart of America’s abortion...

Sam Giancana ran the Chicago Outfit, plotted with the CIA to kill Castro, shared a mistress with JFK, and was shot dead in his own kitchen the night before he was due to testify before the Senate. Here's the full story.

When Lord of the Flies first arrived on bookshop shelves on 17 September 1954, it did so with little fanfare and modest expectations....

Roberto Calvi was found hanging beneath Blackfriars Bridge in 1982, pockets full of bricks and cash. He'd been laundering money for the Vatican, the Mafia, and the CIA. Nobody was ever convicted. Here's the full story.

In the 1970s, Lawrenceville, Georgia, was hardly the sort of place you’d expect to see splashed across national headlines. It sat about...

When we flick through war photography now, we half expect raw, sometimes shocking snapshots of the front lines, muddy trenches, bombed-out cities, and human suffering caught in a single shutter click. But wind the clock back to the 1850s and photography was a different beast altogether: heavy, chemical-laden, and demanding hours of patience rather than split-second timing. Into this world stepped Roger Fenton, a barrister-turned-photographer with a keen sense of adventure and

Strolling through any European art gallery that houses works from the Middle Ages to the early Renaissance, one cannot help but notice something oddly humorous. The baby Jesus, and indeed many other infants in religious paintings, often look less like cherubic babies and more like stern, middle aged men who have seen rather a lot of life already. Their receding hairlines, solemn expressions, and oddly defined muscles leave modern viewers scratching their heads. Some appear to

On a cold January evening in 1958, an open cornfield near a quiet pond in Robeson County, North Carolina, became the unlikely stage for one of the most remarkable local acts of defiance against the Ku Klux Klan in American history. Known variously as the Battle of Hayes Pond, the Battle of Maxton Field or simply the Maxton Riot, this clash did not spring from any grandly orchestrated civil rights campaign but from a fiercely local resolve by the Lumbee people to defend their

There is no singular standard of beauty. Throughout history and across continents, human beings have continually reimagined what it means...

In an age long before swipes, likes and texted emojis, Victorian society found its own coded means for a glance across a ballroom to...

On a crisp Saturday morning, 11 December 1926, the quiet farming community of Buda, Texas — some fifteen miles south of Austin — witnessed an event that would ripple far beyond its cotton fields. Into the Farmers National Bank walked a petite young woman with auburn hair, bright brown eyes and the composed bearing of a small-town teacher or librarian. Introducing herself as a newspaper correspondent for the Beaumont Enterprise , she charmed local customers and bank staff alik

On a summer morning in July 1943, Willem Arondéus faced a Nazi firing squad in the dunes of Overveen. As he stood before his...

Collage of a forest tent, three smiling girls, and a police mugshot of a man labeled ICE DEPT. TULSA, OKLA.

In the mid-19th century, at a time when the United States was rapidly expanding its borders and solidifying its national identity, a...

In the Berlin district of Spandau, a red‑brick compound once loomed behind layers of concrete walls, barbed wire, and armed watchtowers. Constructed in 1876 during the German Empire, the prison’s quiet beginnings as a military detention centre would give way, over the following century, to a darker renown.