Blog | Alastair Wallace

The Match

It was the final day of the season, championship day. A boy sat on the tiered, wooden spectator benches waiting for his turn to bat. He...

The World's Largest Cult

The Catholic Church has rightly been described as one of the largest corporations in the world. Under the guise of religion and...

The Crusades - Why Did They Happen?

In late November 1095 CE, Pope Urban II summoned the people of Western (Catholic) Christendom* to come to the defence of the Holy Land....

Feudalism in Medieval Europe

When people think of the Middle Ages, all sorts of images might be conjured up. It might be Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone duelling in...

Marie de France

Marie de France is widely considered to be the first woman to write in French. If any woman preceded her, the works have been lost....

Blurb for 'Festival of the Oppressed'

Love at first sight? Sometimes it happens. The problem isn’t that first sight, it’s the days and months afterwards as you work out who...

Avicenna

Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn bin ʿAbdullāh ibn al-Ḥasan bin ʿAlī bin Sīnā al-Balkhi al-Bukhari was a Persian polymath during the Islamic Golden...

Abu Zayd Ahmed ibn Sahl Balkhi

Abu Zayd Ahmed ibn Sahl Balkhi was a 9th-century Persian polymath. He was born in Shamistiyan, in the Khorasan province of Balkh. It is...

Music in the 13th Century

Music—both religious and secular—flourished during the Middle Ages. The troubadours prospered in Southern France leading to the trouvéres...