Volume 67 Issue 1 January 2017

A blueprint and justification for future Russian expansion was signed on January 30th, 1667.

The Byzantine Empire's ban on the veneration of icons died with its last iconoclast emperor on January 20th, 842.

When Joe Biden said ‘God save the Queen’, was he heralding the end of the republic?

The frontiersman and showman died on January 10, 1917.

Churchill’s vision of Britain’s role in the world may provide the key to Brexit.

Medieval understanding of the soul and the body meant that a saintly life was a life of physical restrictions. Katherine Harvey explores the extreme suffering bishops put themselves through, from weeping and celibacy to starvation and, sometimes, death.

The visit of Natsume Sōseki to London at the turn of the 20th century suggested ways of successfully combining western industrialism with ‘Japanese Spirit’.

Franco’s 1939 victory in the Spanish Civil War saw half a million refugees head north to France. They would be followed by many more in a decade of disaster.

A diplomat representing Franco’s Spain and his accomplice, an Italian Fascist, became unlikely saviours of Jews stranded amid the horrors of the Hungarian capital during the Second World War.

In the post-Taliban era, Afghanistan is seeking unifying national heroes from its past. But, as David Loyn explains, agreement on who should be celebrated is hard to reach.