In March 1945, with victory over Nazi Germany only weeks away, Pravda praised the nearly one million Soviet women who had fought the Germans and their allies. They had ‘proved themselves as pilots, snipers, submachine gunners. But they don’t forget about their primary duty to nation and state – that of motherhood.’ In accordance with the official policy of the state, women combatants were henceforth to lay down not only their arms but also their wartime identities... read more

Angry chefs create angry reviewers and Anthony Warner scores double here. First, because his anger is so bloody righteous, and second, because what I really want to do is just type out a list of all his arguments and then stand over you while you read it, jabbing my finger and shouting ‘See? See?’ and ‘Have you got to the bit about Gwyneth Paltrow’s mouthwash?’ (coconut oil, which may have antimicrobial... read more

The fact that Homo sapiens was preceded by multiple now-extinct hominid species tells us that evolution has experimented with a number of different ways of being human. One of the most ancient and best characterised of these prior forms of human existence, Ardipithecus ramidus, is a case in point. It lived roughly 4.4 million years ago. Extracted from the reddish-brown sediment... read more

Highland lodges occupy a peculiar and sometimes baffling architectural niche. Designed primarily as holiday homes, they sprout in the middle of nowhere, often of palatial extent and constructed with every flourish of style. To the modern eye they are sources of wonder. What race of giants could have built on such a scale... read more

Pedeir Ceinc y Mabinogi is a set of four loosely connected prose tales preserved in a couple of late medieval Welsh manuscripts, though they must have reached their present form by about 1200. The conventional title translates as ‘The Four Branches of the Mabinogi’, mabinogi being a word meaning very roughly ‘youthful exploits’, or the early achievements of a hero. But this title tells us almost nothing... read more

We tend to think we know little about Jane Austen’s life and yet we actually know quite a lot. Her family tree is well documented, as are the lives of family members; there are enough of her letters to give us a vivid sense of her sharp humour and her daily life. Then there are her poems, early drafts and juvenilia, and the many observations about her by other people. Yet two hundred years after her death, a forensic search is still on... read more