Belgium

Who is the greatest artist of all time? Join Tom and Dominic as Belgian historian Bart van Loo puts forward the case for the hyper-realistic and highly influential art of early Northern Renaissance pa…

By the end of July 1914, the world hovered on the edge of a cataclysmic world war; Austria was at war with Serbia, Russia with Germany, and an ultimatum had been handed to Belgium. The July crisis had…

“We have been forced to draw the sword”. Following the expiry of Austria’s Ultimatum on Saturday 25th July 1914, the Kaiser and the Tsar - friends and cousins, long desirous of peace between their tw…

Twelve months after the dramatic Women’s March on Versailles, the Revolution proper was well into its stride, and while Paris overflowed with a sense of unbridled political freedom, the King and Queen…

The story of King Leopold of Belgium’s brutal regime in the Congo Free State, during the late 19th century, is one of the darkest and most important in global history. It is a story of horror - the mu…

“A secret society of murderers with a king for a ringleader”. In 1885 King Leopold of Belgium; an awkward, ruthless, selfish man, was recognised as the sovereign of the Congo. Long determined to c…

Exposing the dark pit of human suffering, cruelty and corruption that had long been secretly festering in King Leopold’s Congo, would reveal one of the greatest abuses of human rights in all history…

Following the declaration of war in 1914, how did the outbreak of the First World War unfold? What were the earliest military engagements of this terrible, totemic event? Who were its key political pl…

Did the Christmas Truce - which saw a number of unofficial ceasefires between the combatants of the First World War, during the Christmas of 1914 - really occur, or was it a myth? What is the real sto…