History

On October 10, 1943, Princess Shigeko, the eldest daughter of Emperor Hirohito, married Prince Morihiro Higashikuni in a ceremony deliberately scaled back because of wartime austerity. The marriage took place as Japan faced ever-increasing Allied bombing raids, and the newlyweds soon experienced the same privations as ordinary citizens: food rationing, fuel shortages, and the constant … Read more

The tiny gesture lasted no more than a second. Margaret reached out and picked a piece of lint from the uniform of Group Captain Peter Townsend, brushing it away as naturally as if they were alone. But they were not alone. They were at Westminster Abbey on June 2nd, 1953, the day her sister was … Read more

In February 1821, a ten-year-old girl lay dying in the Bavarian royal court. The physicians called it mucous fever, a vague diagnosis that offered no comfort and no cure. Her name was Maximiliane Josepha Karoline, and in the family she was known simply as Nene. On the fourth of that month, she died, and the … Read more

Joseph Stalin’s children each faced a different fate in the years after the Second World War, yet all three were shaped by the same brutal reality: their father’s absolute power and his utter refusal to place family above politics. Stalin ruled the Soviet Union from the late 1920s until his death in 1953, and his … Read more

In April 2021, after her husband’s funeral service ended, the Queen of the United Kingdom walked back to her rooms at Windsor Castle. Her dresser, Angela Kelly, was waiting for her. Kelly helped the Queen off with her coat and her hat. No words were spoken. The Queen walked to her sitting room, closed the … Read more

On a hot summer afternoon in the mid-1980s, if your mother had run errands too long and the car had become unbearable, there was a specific kind of salvation waiting at the edge of town. Without much discussion, she would pull into the Dairy Queen parking lot, and everything reset. For a generation of American … Read more

In the summer of 1943, the Allied high command looked at Italy and saw a shortcut. Winston Churchill had called it the soft underbelly of Europe. Sicily was falling, Mussolini had just been overthrown, and Italy was about to change sides. The road to Rome appeared wide open, and the planners in London and Washington … Read more

The call came to the house in Woodside before the morning was old. Peter Folger heard that his daughter was dead on a rented lawn four hundred miles to the south, in a house owned by a talent manager, a house she had lived in for four months and one week. He was a man … Read more

For thirty years, a child carried only scattered memories of the days before he vanished. His full name was Joel Manilla. His father drove a jeepney, and his mother worked as a seamstress. Across the decades and an ocean, she never stopped wondering if her missing son was still alive. Then, on an extraordinary day, … Read more