Standard Time: How Sandford Fleming and a Nation of Clocks Changed the World
A World Out of Sync For most of human history, time was local. Towns set their clocks by the sun, with noon defined as the moment it reached its highest point in the sky. When people and information travelled slowly, the small differences between one town’s time and...
The Long Recovery — When England Quietly Changed Direction
Every civilization eventually faces a question no one wants to answer: What happens after everything falls apart? The England we left at the end of the fourteenth century had endured almost everything history could throw at it. The Black Death had returned more than...
The Peerage and The Gentry — England’s Governing Class
Westminster Hall has witnessed coronation feasts, royal courts, state trials and the evolution of Parliament. Yet England was never governed from this room alone. Beyond these walls, thousands of members of the peerage and gentry quietly carried out the work that kept...
From Conquest to Kingdom — England’s High Medieval Ascent (1066–1300)
York offers a clue to one of the great stories of medieval England. Walk through the city on a busy Saturday morning and, after a while, something begins to feel oddly familiar. The market is bustling. Shops line narrow streets. The cathedral dominates the skyline....
George Gilbert Scott (1811–1878) — The Architect Who Rebuilt Medieval Britain
Walk into almost any English cathedral and there is a good chance George Gilbert Scott has already been there. York, Lichfield, Ely, Chichester, Peterborough, Rochester, St Albans, Hereford, Exeter, Durham, Salisbury—the list seems almost endless. By the time of his...
Edward Burne-Jones (1833–1898) — When Beauty Became a Form of Stewardship
Walk into almost any Victorian church in England and, if the sun is shining, there is a good chance Edward Burne-Jones will introduce himself before anyone mentions his name. Light pours through one of his stained-glass windows, filling the stone with deep blues,...
John Ruskin (1819–1900) — When Beauty Became a Moral Question
Why do some buildings move us while others leave us completely unmoved? It is a deceptively simple question, yet one that occupied John Ruskin for much of his life. He wrote about paintings, cathedrals and architecture, but he was never really writing about art...
Mesopotamia — The First Step was Counting
When we think about the beginnings of civilization, our minds often leap to pyramids, kings and great cities. The real story may have begun somewhere far less dramatic. It may have begun with someone trying to remember how many sheep, or sacks of grain, or jars of...
Babylon — When Civilization Learned to Be Reliable
Few ancient cities have accumulated as many meanings as Babylon. Its name conjures a tower reaching towards heaven, its builders suddenly unable to understand one another. It recalls Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian Captivity, the mysterious writing on the wall...
Egypt in Turin—An Accidental Highlight
Turin was not supposed to be the point. This was a Northern Italy trip with friends — Bill and Maura — the kind of people who have already seen most things, lived in most places, and are not easily impressed. Americans, but only technically so: twenty-three years...
- Standard Time: How Sandford Fleming and a Nation of Clocks Changed the World
- The Long Recovery — When England Quietly Changed Direction
- The Peerage and The Gentry — England’s Governing Class
- From Conquest to Kingdom — England’s High Medieval Ascent (1066–1300)
- George Gilbert Scott (1811–1878) — The Architect Who Rebuilt Medieval Britain
