Medieval

Byzantium: The Emperor's New Clothes?

Alexander Kazhdan considers the influence of totalitarianism and meritocracy in the Byzantine empire – and its relationship to the growth of the Russian and other successor states in the East.

Younger Sons in Tudor and Stuart England

Linda Pollock questions the assumption that younger brothers in the 16th and 17th-centuries were automatically stifled and frustrated, impotent in the family pecking order.