What can looking back at David Hockney's paintings from 1967 tell us about the relationship between art and changing social attitudes and the impact of observing nature now. Show more

Born in Rio de Janeiro in 1902, Elsie Houston arrived in Paris as a 24-year-old and wowed audiences with songs in Afro-Brazilian dialect that fused folk with a soprano training. Show more

In 1821, Thomas de Quincey's Confessions of an Opium Eater paved the way for drug memoirs. How do contemporary novelists help us see the global opium trade in a different way? Show more

From a Tudor letter to texting - how has the use of punctuation marks developed over the centuries? Florence Hazrat thinks about the way brackets help us understand the pandemic. Show more

The Shānāmeh or ‘Book of Kings’ by Ferdowsi includes King Alexander. What does this tell us about Persian attitudes towards the man the west celebrates as a military conqueror? Show more

Why did early English settlers in Virginia bring with them an impractical folded collar to wear? Lauren Working considers the symbolism of neckwear in colonial America. Show more

Sarah Jilani looks at why independent Africa's first generation of film-makers were some of the fiercest critics of their new nations in films such as Mandabi and Finye. Show more

When a man from Benin was brought to Havana by slave traders, he worked for a count but came up with a plan to secure his freedom and became a poster boy for church missionaries. Show more

Over 250 million people use the Cyrillic alphabet, but its history and the journeys of Saints Cyril and Methodios are a source of division not unity amongst Slavonic peoples. Show more

A meditation on Bill Martin's poetry of pits, Buddhist-inspired pilgrimage and the post-industrial landscape once inhabited by the Haliwerfolc. Show more