In early June 1363, Giovanni Boccaccio received a letter that stung him deeply. Just a few days shy of his fiftieth birthday, he was then at the height of his creative powers. He had already penned at least a dozen major works, including the Decameron, any one of which would have assured him a place alongside Dante and Petrarch in the firmament of Italian literature. Although recent political upheavals had forced him to leave his native Florence, he was still writing feverishly. Yet to his friend Francesco Nelli, the author of the letter, he remained a ‘man of glass’. He was painfully fragile: fickle, oversensitive... read more

Few leaders in history have aspired to territorial aggrandisement on the scale of Cecil Rhodes. The Anglo-Saxons were the finest race in the world, he declared, and ‘the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race.’ He envisaged forming a secret society, modelled on the Jesuits, to bring all ‘uncivilised’ regions of the globe under the Union Jack, recover America and usher in a reign of universal peace. He even spoke of annexing the planets. ‘All this is to be painted red; this is my dream,’ said Rhodes, rubbing his hand, over a map of southern Africa. It was a dream he pursued with revivalist fervour... read more

For my money, there is no more captivating view in all Italy than the vast panorama of the harbour of Syracuse, framed by its majestic, honey-coloured Baroque buildings. The city’s origins go back to the eighth century BC, but it found fame when in 415 an ill-fated Athenian armada entered that very harbour. Ancient glories can still be glimpsed today, in the cathedral (built around the fifth-century BC Temple of Athena) and in the archaeological park, which boasts a vast theatre, and the notorious... read more

John Maynard Keynes observed in 1936 that ‘common sense’ in matters of political economy was often nothing more than a half-understood and mangled version of the academic orthodoxy of fifty or a hundred years earlier. The same could be said today of demography. As someone who spends much of his time writing and speaking about the problems of too few children being born and population ageing and decline, I continue to be amazed by how many people’s demographic world view is stuck in the late 1960s. Then, sharply falling mortality rates (particularly among infants)... read more

In May 1945, the youth club of St Anne’s Church in Kew constructed a huge pile of dried wood on the nearby cricket green in preparation for the announcement of VE Day. When Churchill declared victory, the young people of the church paraded a full-size effigy of Adolf Hitler to the green and placed it on top of the pyre, whereupon the vicar, my predecessor, conducted a ceremonial burning, personally setting the whole thing alight. Despite the echoes of medieval and early modern brutality, the account of the event in the parish magazine expressed no qualms about the idea that the church might burn another ... read more

Tech watchers tell us that the earliest adopter of any innovation is invariably the porn industry. But the steadicam auteurs and their upholstered stars have failed to get much purchase on emojis. True, the blameless aubergine has been co-opted for purposes undreamed of even in Heston Blumenthal’s Frankenkitchen. I might be more unworldly than most, but it strikes me that few other emojis are likely to frighten the horses. Keith Houston’s history of emojis reveals that explicit images as well as political provocations, flagrant brand advertisements and other undesirables fall foul of something ... read more