A student of world history attacks a vast subject, one that can never be "mastered", only "navigated", as Patrick Manning said.(1) The thousand-and-one difficulties encountered in the process of translation - the attempt to retain meaning across languages - alone saddles any effort to comprehend the whole with an irreducible amount of uncertainty.(2) This effort is surely worth it in our emerging global age; we are one human family and, like it or not, we have to find positive...

Recently photographed the original fourth form classroom at Harrow School. If you look at the third panel to the right of the fireplace, you can see where the poet Byron and the playwright/poet Sheridan carved their names before they left the school. It was a tradition to allow the graduating pupils to carve their own names on the wooden panelling in this particular classroom. This room has been used in many films, including the original Harry Potter. It was extremely difficult to photograph due...