Africans in Georgian Britain have often been portrayed as victims of slavery, unfortunates at the bottom of the social heap. The reality was far more fluid and varied, as Onyeka shows, with many African gentlemen sharing the same cultural and social aspirations as their fellow Englishmen.

Though it all seems rather mild from the distance of half a century, the riots that took place in English seaside towns during 1964 revealed a shift in values from those of the austere war generation to the newly affluent baby boomers, argues Clive Bloom.

Germany will be among the favourites to lift the World Cup this summer. But when West Germany won the competition for the first time in 1954 they were the unfancied representatives of a divided nation emerging from defeat and humiliation, says Paul Legg.