Beardy History

I’ve written three books on the Knights Templar and tried to avoid a common mistake of seeing the medieval Crusades solely through European eyes.

Half a century ago, the seven sheikhdoms that now make up the United Arab Emirates were a loose collection of pearl-diving and fishing communities on the edge of the British Empire, with no combined GDP worth mentioning and no seat at any global table.

Roman Catholics are banned from being Freemasons so imagine the horror in Victorian England when a leading masonic politician quit being Grand Master of the country’s masons and converted to Roman Catholicism.

A Chinese man who believed he was Jesus caused the deaths of tens of millions of people.

Homer was an ancient Greek writer who wrote The Odyssey.

As a teenager, I went to confession at our local Roman Catholic church and struggled to find much to confess.

Temples built up to 3,000 years before the Pyramids of Egypt – which were constructed around 2,500BC.

When entire settlements disappear without a trace, what do their silences tell us?

I’m writing a book on secret societies at the moment for a publisher and as I looked at the ancient Greek mystery cults, and all their strange practices and beliefs, I began to see elements of Christianity.

When Errol Christie first sat down with me to tell his life story, I wasn’t prepared for the journey that lay ahead.

From lead-laced face powder to jawline-shattering surgery, the lengths people have gone to look beautiful have often been lethal.

My grandmother – ‘granny’ to me – was an Irish woman who had been a school teacher before retirement, but in her last years, liked nothing better than to fill my young head with tales from Irish mythology.

They were the rockstars of the ancient world — enslaved, brutalised, and adored.

Adolf Hitler remains one of history’s most studied and reviled figures — yet beyond the textbook horror of the Holocaust and World War II lies a more unsettling portrait.

Henry VIII is one of history’s most recognisable monarchs — not for his military genius or philosophical writings, but largely because he went through wives at a rate that would give a modern divorce lawyer palpitations.