France we know, but French governments perplex us, writes J.H.M. Salmon. Mazarin’s was one of the oddest regimes that France has undergone. This Italian “condottiere in diplomacy” ruled France, despite recalcitrant noblemen and civil war, for nearly twenty years.
Jon Manchip White describes how a garrison of 1,050 Europeans and 712 loyal Indians held the Residency at Lucknow against an army of 30,000 Sepoys.
Among the ruins of ancient Pylos— which, together with all the other major strongholds of Mycenaean power, was destroyed at the end of the Hellenic Bronze Age—a library of clay tablets has come to light, depicting a threatened society “in the throes of total moblization.” By L.R. Palmer.
T.H. McGuffe describes the history of fire-arms, from the fourteenth century onwards, considering their uses and effectiveness in war, in sport, and for display.
Peter Green meets the satirists of the Roman Empire, and is presented with a picture of a world in corruption and decline. Yet the Empire outlasted its bitterest critics by several hundred years.
D.M. Walmsley analyses the plentiful artistic and personal connections between the explorations of the Virginia company and the Bard.
Raymond Tong describes how Britain's connections with West Africa began four centuries ago, when Wyndham sailed to Benin in search of gold and pepper.
K.G. Tregonning traces the path of Mongol conquest to a lesser studied destination - the ancient kingdoms of the Indo-Chinese and Malayan peninsulas.
Esther A.L. Moir meets the early English antiquaries— from William of Worcester to Sir William Dugdale—pioneers who laid the foundations of an important form of modern historical scholarship. Travelling up and down Great Britain, They kept a careful record of everything they heard and saw, investigating the monuments of the past and describing the landscapes of their own age.
In Thucydides' history of the Peloponnesian War, P.A. Brunt sees why and how the Greeks failed to encompass peace and unity.
