The period of masonic internationalism in the last third of the 19th and first third of the 20th centuries saw the most visible – and controversial – attempts to organisationally model the “cosmopolitan imperative” of freemasonry. The various freemasonries in Europe saw themselves as links in a world-spanning “chain of brothers” forged by the…[Read more]

Britain’s second-longest early medieval monument – Wat’s Dyke – was a component of an early medieval hydraulic frontier zone rather than primarily serving as a symbol of power, a fixed territorial border or a military stop-line. Wat’s Dyke was not only created to monitor and control mobility over land, but specifically did so through its careful a…[Read more]

Often neglected and misunderstood, there are considerable challenges to digital and real-world public engagement with Britain’s third-longest linear monument, Wat’s Dyke (Williams 2020a). To foster public education and understanding regarding of Wat’s Dyke’s relationship to the broader story of Anglo-Welsh borderlands, but also to encoura…[Read more]

We hope this comic heritage trail for Wrexham helps introduce you to Britain’s third-longest ancient monument

This article introduces the third volume of the Offa’s Dyke Journal (ODJ). As well as reviewing ODJ 3’s contents, I present reviews of the journal received to date, notable new publications on linear monuments, and the Collaboratory’s key activities during 2021. The context and significance of the research network’s ongoing endeavours are present…[Read more]

Introduction to the collected essays of Professor Dai Morgan Evans

In ‘Degeneration’ (1892), Max Nordau included Émile Zola in his theory that fin-de-siècle artists were a danger to society. According to Nordau, the ‘false science’ in Zola’s Naturalist novels would erode social progress in their alleged preoccupation with disease, sexual deviancy and amorality. This article proposes that degeneration is, how…[Read more]

Haussmann’s re-building of Paris in the 1850s and ’60s had created an ordered city. However, the bourgeoisie used the new urban configurations as a weapon against the lower classes. This article describes the spaces of the underground and the overground: the underground is the metaphorical and literal rubbish heap for those in the lower parts of…[Read more]

Freedom of or from religion. Freemasonry as an international testing ground for fundamental societal issues (c. 1850–1930)
In masonic internationalism, key framework parameters of masonic activity were negotiated. They concerned the fundamental societal issue of how religious freedom (freedom to practise religion) and liberty of conscience (…[Read more]

Several documents from Egypt and Ḫatti (especially the Amarna letters and the Egyptian-Hittite correspondence) mention envoys and messengers in charge of diplomatic contacts between the two countries. Cuneiform and hieroglyphic transcriptions of Egyptian names at Ugarit hint at an actual presence (in Ugarit and Karkemish) of officials coming f…[Read more]

Espigando el diverso y abigarrado contenido del primer artículo dedicado a la biografía de Mencía de Mendoza, es bastante curioso el hecho de que su humilde y opaco autor, que no se atrevió a firmar la pieza, otorgase veracidad a una supuesta conversación entre la dama y su marido. Según este relato, en una de las ocasiones en que el noble guerr…[Read more]

This article examines the mixture of hostile and amicable relations that Bavarian fighting men had with French civilians during the Franco-Prussian War, when civilians provided food, fodder and quarters to the invading armies and sometimes took up arms against them. Relying mainly on published personal narratives, this article looks at the…[Read more]

This chapter focuses on German soldiers and French civilians in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, using the example of the Bavarian contingent. It examines why soldiers sometimes departed from generally accepted standards in Europe about sparing civilians the effects of war as much as possible.

Far from detracting from the image emerging in the historiography of an up-to-date, national profession, the Wilhelmine officer corps’ showy appearance and ritualistic comportment underscore the great lengths to which the corps went to adjust to contemporaneous social, political, and cultural developments in the Kaiserreich.

This essay offers a revisionist interpretation of the Imperial German officer corps, whose members have long enjoyed a schizophrenic reputation in the historiography as either consummate military professionals or feudalistic representatives of a bygone political system. Using the career of Wilhelm Groener (1867-1939). it reexamines the…[Read more]

Review of Poetic Style and Innovation in Old English, Old Norse, and Old Saxon, by Megan E. Hartman, Berlin/Boston, Walter de Gruyter, 2020, pp. XII + 213, £83.00, ISBN: 978-1-5015-1832-4

The scope of the traditions related to Mahishasur is vast. There is a memorial of him in Bundelkhand, preserved by the Archaelogical Survey of India. Khajuraho’s world-famous temples also have carvings of Mahishasur.

On 9 October 2014, the police had raided the office of Forward Press. Some people associated with Hindu organizations had a c…[Read more]

यह बुंदेलखंड स्थित महोबा का यात्रा संस्मरण है।
इसमें लेखक पौराणिक मिथक महिषासुर से संबंधित स्थलों की खोज में निकलता है।
वर्ष 2011 में जवाहर लाल नेहरू यूनिवर्सिटी के शोधार्थियों द्वारा महिषासुर को दलित, पिछड़े और आदिवासियों का पौरणिक नायक के रूप से प्रचारित किए जाने के बाद हंगामा खड़ा हो गया था। लेखक उस समय एक पत्रिका में प्रबंध-संपादक के रूप म…[Read more]

How do people make sense of works of art? And how do they write to make others see the same way? There are many guides to looking at art, histories of art history and art criticism, and accounts of various ‘theories’ and ‘methods’, but this book offers something very unlike the normal search for difference and division: it examines the general…[Read more]

Freemasons often referred to an ideal of “humanité” (Humanität, umanità, humanity) in order to bridge all differences separating mankind. In doing so, they rendered these differences all the more visible, especially in the international arenas. This was definitely the case when freemasons tried to deduce from this ideal “universal” standards…[Read more]