Britain

The British had been trading in India since 1600. As R.W. Lightbown, it was not, however, until the late eighteenth century that British interest in Indian culture burgeoned and was carried home by the traveller.

To hundreds of thousands of Indians the British Raj was personified by its administrative arm, the Indian Civil Service, explains Ann Ewing, by which the British governed its imperial possession through a small élite spread thinly throughout the vast sub-continent.

In the inter-war years, football was a popular sport which drew huge crowds of spectators. The totalitarian regimes of Germany and Italy, argues Peter J. Beck, were not slow to realise the propaganda, potential of their nations' sporting successes – and soon Britain recognised the value of sport to its own national image.

'London is rich in historic buildings and monuments, but behind most familiar landmarks lurk the ghosts of abandoned designs and rejected projects.' In this extract from their book London as it might have been, Felix Barker and Ralph Hyde consider bridges which were planned for the Thames.

From the Restoration in 1660 until 1714, England was intermittently at war with first the Dutch and then the French - and it became imperative, argues Howard Tomlinson, that the country should have an adequate central armoury for general ordnance equipment.

Keith Robbins considers the plurality of the Edwardian church, its relations with the state, and its responses to social change.

Charles Mordaunt, Third Earl of Peterborough, 1658-1735, is probably best remembered as the captor of Barcelona in 1705. Aram Bakshian Jr. shows that, in addition to being a soldier, he was also 'a sailor, courtier, conspirator, diplomat, wit and rake'.

Ian Kershaw on an English translation of a German history of Nazi government

Taking the waters became a Victorian passion and spa towns flourished. In this article the first prize winner in History Today's Essay Competition Pamela Steen, a student at the Open University, describes the pleasure and the pains of this fashion.

Ziggi Alexander and Audrey Dewjee consider the life of a remarkable Victorian woman.