Genius: Did you mean...?

The Desert Rats was the nickname of the 7th Armoured Division of the British Eighth Army, which first fought in North Africa during the Second World War (1939-45). Fighting in the Western Desert Campaigns and the North Africa Campaign, the...

Polybius (l. c. 208-125 BCE) was, whilst a Greek historian, a Roman historian, in that his work dealt with explaining how Rome came to be so great. Like the three Classical Greek Historians, Polybius himself had personal experiences and inquiries...

The First Fitna (656-661 CE) was the first civil war of the Islamic Empire fought between the fourth Rashidun Caliph, Ali ibn Abi Talib (656-661 CE), and the governor of Syria, Muawiya (later Muawiya I; r. 661-680 CE). Deep fissures divided...

Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) was an English historian most famous for his influential work The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, volume one of which was published in 1776, with the final sixth volume coming in 1788. Gibbon's...

Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) was an Italian composer best known for operas such as Rigoletto, La traviata, and Aida. Verdi is noted for his powerful scores and strong characters where anti-heroes lead the dramatic action through often complex...

Johann Strauss II (1825-1899), aka Strauss the Younger, was an Austrian composer best known for his waltzes such as The Blue Danube. Famed throughout Europe and the United States in his own lifetime, Strauss was known as the 'Waltz King'...

Georges Bizet (1838-1875) was a French Romantic composer best known for his opera Carmen and the instrumental music for the play L'Arlésienne. None of his earlier operas had enjoyed any great success, and even Carmen took several months to...

The Château d'Amboise, located in the Loire Valley, in central France, was built over several centuries and was the centre of royal power during the Renaissance (from the 15th to the early 17th century). Witness to the heyday of the French...

Gustav Holst (1874-1934) was a British composer of Swedish origin most famous for his dramatic orchestral suite The Planets, first performed in public in 1919. Holst also composed several operas, wrote sacred choral works such as The Hymn...

Titus Andronicus is the earliest tragedy by William Shakespeare (l. c.1564-1616), probably written sometime between 1589 and 1593, and first performed in 1594. Infamous for its gratuitous violence and two-dimensional characters, Titus Andronicus...