Europe

Romantic Bohemia

Joanna Richardson describes how, during the 1830s, the world of Bohemia offered a warm and fruitful climate to artists and writers.

The Black Death, Part I

Philip Ziegler describes how, in the mid-fourteenth century, about one third of the population of Western Europe perished from bubonic plague.

The Fighting Galley

Bryan Waites describes how, both in the Mediterranean and in the Atlantic, the medieval powers of Europe found that the oared galley was a very effective weapon of war.

The Paris Peace Conference, Part II

Norman Bentwich analyses the diplomatic battle between the Soviet Union and the Western Powers that gradually came into the open in Paris in 1946, and foreshadowed the Cold War.

The Paris Peace Conference, Part I

Norman Bentwich recalls the official meetings in Paris of 1946, which were concerned with the future of Germany’s former allies in Europe. At these protracted sessions the conflict between the Soviet Union and the Western Powers gradually came into the open.

Lord Fitzwilliam’s Grand Tour

E.A. Smith describes how, immediately after the Seven Years’ War, the young Earl Fitzwilliam became a grand tourist of Europe in the eighteenth-century style.

The Rise and Fall of Jacques Coeur, Part Two

Just when the great merchant-banker had reached the zenith of his career, writes A.R. Myers, Jacques Couer was suddenly disgraced and imprisoned. Three years later, he was able to escape and took refuge, first in Provence, then in Rome with a sympathetic Pope.

War and Profit in the Late Middle Ages

C.T. Allmand describes the economy of medieval military history, and how Chaucer’s “parfit gentil knight”, on his pilgrimage to Canterbury, was probably sustained by the prizes won in foreign wars.