Volume 7 Issue 2 February 1957

C.R. Boxer offers a study of Japanese isolationism between the mid-seventeenth and the mid-nineteenth century.

Both before and after the fall of the Republic, Roman satirists give us an extraordinarily vivid picture of the society in which they lived, with its materialism, its opportunism, its unceasing pursuit of power and wealth.

Fischer von Erlach flourished in a new era of exhibitionism, Mary Henderson writes, to become the most influential Austrian architect of the Baroque period, shaping the tastes of the Habsburg empire.

Deryck Abel reflects on a crucial figure in the dispute between King John of England and Pope Innocent III, which in turn led to the issuing of Magna Carta in 1215.