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Geoffrey Chaucer’s Miller’s Tale is renowned for its salacious storyline of sexual misadventure. Set in 14th-century Oxford, it tells the tale of John the Carpenter, a husband so terrified that another “Noah’s flood” is coming to drown the world that he sleeps in a basket in the attic – freeing…

Earlier this year, a group of researchers published a paper on the remarkable phenomenon of sex reversal in several Australian birds, including wild magpies and kookaburras.

In medieval England, peasants on some estates were entitled to a range of sick, annual and bereavement leave that could rival those of many workers in the UK today.

Maps do more than show us where we are or help us find where we need to go. They are powerful cultural documents, reflecting – and often shaping – the values, priorities and secrets of the societies that create them.