Volume 76 Issue 4 April 2026

On 26 April 1478 the attempted coup against Florentine tyrant Lorenzo de’ Medici ended in disaster.

If all the world’s a stage, argues Indira Ghose in A Defence of Pretence: Civility and the Theatre in Early Modern England, then on the stage is where we see change most vividly.

China plans to move its British embassy to a controversial new London site. It will carry 150 years of history with it.

‘What is the most common misconception about my field? That the Byzantine Empire was decadent and effeminate. I wish.’

Lying Abroad: Henry Wotton and the Invention of Diplomacy by Carol Chillington Rutter is a case study of the archetypal early modern ambassador.

Elizabeth I’s brief illness made the question of the succession top priority for William Cecil and the Privy Council.

By the late 19th century the relationship between art and Italy felt consigned to history. On 30 April 1895 creativity and controversy returned with the first Venice Biennale.

If the present, with its conflicts and uncertainties, is impossible to know, asks Italo Calvino, how can we hope to understand the past?

Waning Crescent: The Rise and Fall of Global Islam by Faisal Devji charts how colonialism and nationalism propelled the Muslim world into modern history.