Volume 60 Issue 5 May 2010

Napoleon: An Extraordinary Rendition

When Napoleon surrendered himself to a British naval captain after his defeat at Waterloo, the victors were faced with a judicial headache. Norman MacKenzie asks: was St Helena Britain’s Guantanamo Bay?

Churchill: Cometh the Finest Hour

In May 1940, Winston Churchill replaced Neville Chamberlain as prime minister. But the great war leader’s rise to power was far from inevitable. Taylor Downing explains what a difference a day made.

Extreme Reactions

The ministry of education in the Czech Republic recently issued guidelines on how to teach children about the country’s totalitarian past. Not everyone is pleased, reports Lubomír Sedlák.

Michael Foot: A Hazlitt for Our Age?

The late Labour leader, who died in March aged 96, was the last great radical voice of Parliament and stands comparison with the celebrated 18th-century polemicist, writes Brian Brivati.

Science & Shelley: What Mary Knew

Patricia Fara explores the scientific education of Mary Shelley and how a work of early science fiction inspired her best-known novel Frankenstein.