Mussolini’s regime isn’t generally associated with a sense of humor, but the Fascist party found comedy useful in certain circumstances.

South Asian maids and nannies journeyed to Britain by the thousands in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century with returning colonials.

Or, what metropolitan Britons could know about the colonies.

In addition to a New Wave hit, Nell Dunn's 1963 book about young women in a poor London neighborhood inspired a Ken Loach adaption that helped shift British attitudes toward abortion.

This nineteenth-century industrial product became a military staple and a critical part of local food culture around the world.

On the 85th anniversary of the first xerographic print, a collection of punk flyers from Cornell University provides an object lesson on (anti-)art in the age of mechanical reproduction.

Luminaries from Agatha Christie to Walter Gropius gravitated to London’s “Lawn Road Flats.” So too did a far less conspicuous cohort: assets for the USSR.

Psychical researcher Harry Price combined the power of academic language with a cultural identity crisis to build a reputation as a “scientific” ghost-hunter.

The Kashmiri American illusionist and mystic drew on his legendary powers of concentration to entertain and astound (in)credulous audiences.

A hundred years after the cosmopolitan city burnt to the ground, the truth about who started the fire and why remains a point of contention.