Volume 57 Issue 9 September 2007

As India celebrates six decades of independence on this year, Jad Adams examines how, in the world’s largest democracy, one family has come to take centre stage in politics, as if by divine right.

Neil Pemberton and Michael Worboys tell the fascinating story of how rabies – a disease that still kills thousands worldwide every year – was eradicated from Britain.

Michael Loewe looks at the dynastic, administrative and intellectual background of the Qin empire, which defined how China would be run for more than 2,000 years, and at the life and achievements of the First Emperor Shi Huangdi, one of the greatest state-builders of history, whose tomb was guarded by the famous terracotta army.

Jonathan Downs looks at a collection of Egyptian pottery sherds discovered at the National Trust’s mansion, Kingston Lacy, in Dorset.

David Gaimster, General Secretary of the Society of Antiquaries of London, introduces a new exhibition he has curated at the Royal Academy focusing on the tercentenary of the Society of Antiquaries, and explains how the Society shaped ideas of British history over that time.

Anne Sebba ponders some mysteries – or coincidences – that link the adult experiences of Frances Hodgson Burnett with the lives of American women who came to Britain in search of marriage in her newly reissued 1907 novel The Shuttle.