The flourishing of radical philosophy in Baron Thierry Holbachs Paris salon from the 1750s to the 1770s stands as a seminal event in Western history. Holbachs house was an international epicenter of revolutionary ideas and intellectual daring, bringing together such original minds as Denis Diderot,[...]
From 1900 to 1914, Europe was a world adrift. In this short span of timebetween the death of Queen Victoria and the outbreak of World War Ia new world order was emerging. In The Vertigo Years, historian Philipp Blom chronicles this conflicted epoch year by year, creating a unique anatomy of a pivo[...]
When the Great War ended in 1918, the West was broken. Religious faith, patriotism, and the belief in human progress had all been called into question by the mass carnage experienced by both sides. Shell shocked and traumatized, the West faced a world it no longer recognized: the old order had colla[...]
"Twilight of the Romanovs" opens a door onto the world of pre-revolutionary Russia in original photographs taken during the last decades of Romanov rule. They include many remarkable colour images created using an early three-colourplate technique; these bring the remote past to life with an especia[...]
Europe, early in the twentieth century: a world adrift, a pulsating era of creativity and contradictions. But did this era vanish in the trenches of the Somme, of Ypres, and of Passchendaele? Look closer and the more this world seems like ours: feminism, democratisation, commercial branding, genetic[...]