Europe

William Amelia describes how Baldassare Castiglione's popular book on courtly manners invoked the elegance and charm of Renaissance life, and went on to influence Europe for centuries.

Christopher Lloyd offers a portrait of the most notorious pirate of his day, John Ward; who helped introduce Barbary corsairs to the use of the well-armed, square-rigged ships of northern Europe with which they terrorised the Mediterranean.

In 1809, under Wellington, Beresford regenerated the Portuguese Army which, Michael Glover writes, had suffered from years of neglect.

G.R. Potter tells the story of a Bavarian religious reformer, burnt in Vienna for heresy.

Patrick Turnbull describes how, during the two months that preceded his abdication at Fontainebleau, Napoleon performed ‘prodigies of genius’.

Stephen Clissold describes a world of Christian slaves and Moslem masters in North Africa, from the twelfth to the nineteenth centuries.

Philip E. Burnham Jr. describes how the court of Clement VI at Avignon became a model of humanism and scholarship for princely courts elsewhere in Europe.

Gerald Morgan describes how the history of Europe and Asia was changed when Mongolian horses were adopted for migration.

George Woodcock describes how, during the centuries after his death, Alexander became many things to many peoples and in countries often distant from those that saw his exploits.

Cecil Parrott describes how the elderly monarch from a Christmas carol was based on the character of a young and vigorous sovereign, assassinated on his birthday by his own brother.