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9. Dizzy Gillespie Stops a Riot
By Chris Campbell Amidst the backdrops of the Cold War and the end of the British Empire, one of the world’s foremost jazz trumpeters was perhaps an unlikely candidate to unite a city divided by both major events. Despatched by the US State Department on a tour of Southern Europe and the Middle East in…
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10. Cooking with Chestnuts in Winter
by Weiao Xing (@WeiaoX) ‘Fresh raw chestnuts are in season in the winter months. Choose heavy nuts with tight-fitting shells’; this is how the celebrated trio of cookery writers Simone Beck, Louisette Bertholle, and Julia Child introduce this ingredient in their influential work Mastering the Art of French Cooking.[i] With an emphasis on ‘fresh produce and ingredients’,…
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11. Boniface VIII: A Christmas Pope
by Jamie Parker-Ward Christmas and the days around it hold a symbolic importance as a moment of transition. In Christian theology, it is the moment that God becomes man in the form of Christ, who would later bring salvation to all. It is no wonder then that Christmas was often picked as the date for…
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12. A Monument to the Great Fire of London
By Zoë Jackson (@ZoeMJackson1) If you have ever disembarked off the London Tube at Monument, you have probably walked past the memorial from which the station gets its name. This 202-foot (61 metres) high column was built to memorialise the 1666 Great Fire of London, which destroyed thousands of houses and numerous churches in central…
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13. Lady Harriet Acland, the American War of Independence, and Tales of Female Heroism
By Molly Groarke This 1784 painting by Robert Pollard depicts a scene from the American War of Independence, shortly after the Battles of Saratoga in 1777. The British forces had been defeated and one of their officers, Colonel John Dyke Acland, had been wounded and captured. In the painting, his wife Lady Harriet Acland, who…
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