Interwar period

Buying and selling with our 'kith and kin' was the hallmark of an intensive inter-war campaign for the idea of Empire.

Gerald Kennedy shows how a fear of revolution and the growing strength of organised labour created tensions in Britain after the end of the First World War. Men such as 'Woodbine Willie' attempted to defuse the situation by preaching the gospel of 'Christian Socialism' at mass meetings across the country.

Helen Graham on the political coalitions in Spain in the 1930s and their role in blocking Fascism.

Paul Preston follows the unsettled road leading to the clash between the Republicans and Nationalists.

David Low, the cartoonist, met Horatio Blimp, a retired Colonel, in a Turkish bath near Charing Cross in the early 1930s. Many agree with C.S. Lewis that Colonel Blimp was 'the most characteristic expression of the English temper in the period between the two wars.'

Chris Cook continues our special feature on the Work Ethic.

Ian Kershaw wonders whether there was one single path of German history leading inexorably to Nazism.

Fifty years ago this month, Adolf Hitler was appointed Reich Chancellor of Germany by the aging President Hindenburg. How were the Nazis able to 'seize power' in this way? Jeremy Noakes begins our special feature by explaining their success.

In the inter-war years, football was a popular sport which drew huge crowds of spectators. The totalitarian regimes of Germany and Italy, argues Peter J. Beck, were not slow to realise the propaganda, potential of their nations' sporting successes – and soon Britain recognised the value of sport to its own national image.