by Helen Kain | Apr 4, 2026 | Carousel Ideas & Systems, The Continental Thread
It is easy to picture Rome at its height — luxurious baths, roads stretching to eternity, and spectacles in the Colosseum — an empire that seems to have been running perfectly well. Which makes its “fall” feel abrupt, almost inexplicable. But Rome did not stop because...
by Helen Kain | Mar 29, 2026 | Carousel People & Ideas, Fascinating People, Themes in History
In the grand theatre of British peerage, few titles have seen more curtain calls than that of the Earl of Leicester. Created no fewer than seven official times between the Norman Conquest and the Victorian Age — and arguably worn de facto by one of England’s...
by Helen Kain | Mar 14, 2026 | France, The Continental Thread
When the roof of Notre-Dame de Paris caught fire in April 2019, the images traveled around the world almost instantly. People watched the flames climb through the timber framework, watched the spire collapse, and wondered — for a moment — whether something...
by Helen Kain | Mar 8, 2026 | Carousel Ideas & Systems, Themes in History
The conflict known as the Wars of the Roses was not a single war but a long struggle for the English crown fought between rival branches of the royal family. The two houses were House of Lancaster and House of York. Both traced their ancestry to Edward III, and both...
by Helen Kain | Mar 8, 2026 | Medieval (1066–1485), Themes in History
In the summer of 2012 archaeologists began excavating a small municipal parking lot in the city of Leicester. The site had once been occupied by the medieval Greyfriars Friary, though centuries of urban change had long since erased any visible trace of the monastery....
by Helen Kain | Mar 1, 2026 | Carousel Ideas & Systems, Early Middle Ages (410-1066), The Continental Thread
For a long time, I thought of what followed Rome’s departure from England as collapse — full stop. The so-called “Dark Ages.” Civilization slipping backwards into mud and thatch as roads were abandoned and stonemasonry was forgotten. That view turns out to be...
