Europe

The Virgin Mary and the Making of Europe

As an integrated system of politics, economy and religion evolved in Europe around the year 1000, the figure of the Virgin Mary – so central to the lives of monks and nuns – became the core of a widely shared, though highly varied, European identity, says Miri Rubin.

Piedmont in the 1850s

Mark Rathbone asks why the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia emerged in the 1850s as the likely unifier of Italy.

Poland’s Memory Crisis

Reconciliation is not following in the wake of the search for truth about the past in one fomer Warsaw Pact country, Colin Graham reports.

Forgotten Soldiers

Tony Chafer examines the paradoxes and complexities that underlie belated recognition of the contribution of African soldiers to the liberation of France in 1944.

The Road to Siberia

Daniel Beer looks at how much Soviet labour camps owed to the theories of Russian liberals on crime, its causes and how to treat it.

Death in the Vienna Woods

Gabriel Ronay revisits the story of a Crown Prince’s suicide pact with his mistress and finds the evidence clearly pointing to murder.