Volume 61 Issue 9 September 2011

When Britain Ran Java

Although little known, the disastrous East India Company intervention in Java had a significant influence on India's governance and left Stamford Raffles’ reputation in tatters.

Jewish Brigade: Soldiers of Zion

Having fled Hitler’s Berlin, Oscar Westreich gained a new identity in Palestine. He eventually joined the British army, whose training of Jewish soldiers proved crucial to the formation of Israel, as his daughter, Mira Bar-Hillel, explains.

The Myth of Nazi Germany's Foreign Ministry

The idea that the German foreign office during the Nazi period was a stronghold of traditional, aristocratic values is no longer tenable according to recent research, as Markus Bauer reports.

Photographing Madness

Richard Lansdown introduces Hugh Welch Diamond, one of the fathers of medical photography, whose images of the insane both reflected and challenged prevailing ideas about visually recording insanity.

The Astrologer's Tables

Lauren Kassell reveals how the casebooks, diaries and diagrams of the late-16th-century astrologer Simon Forman provide a unique perspective on a period when the study of the stars began to embrace modern science.

Tacitus: The Continuing Message

Christopher B. Krebs considers Irene Coltman Brown’s article on the ambivalent and ironic Roman historian Tacitus, first published in History Today in 1981.

The History of Sexuality

Since the 1970s, feminists, gay activists and historians have been questioning the notion of sexual repression in the past. Anna Clark considers important recent studies on this most stimulating of subjects.