Britain

Bernard Porter on espionage, past and present.

Richard Cavendish visits an organisation devoted to the maps and plans of the capital's past.

Tony Aldous investigates a reconstructed 1694 column near Covent Garden.

Homes for heroes? Gertrude Prescott Nuding argues that the inspiration behind and debates over the founding of Britain's National Portrait Gallery reveal the Victorian establishment at its most earnest about who was worth celebrating in 'our island story'.

Rosemary O'Day explains how a reinvestigation of the data collected by a pioneer social scientist is shedding new light on the lifestyles of Victorian London.

Ian Seymour looks at the involvement of Elizabeth I's astrologer in matters of state, and his diplomatic intrigues on the Continent on the eve of the Armada.

'A life of action and constant fidelity to a set of ideas': Max Beloff takes a fresh look at the career of Leo Amery with the publication of the latter's second volume of diaries – a man by no means the stereotype of an inter-war Conservative politician.

Tom Nairn looks at the role of the monarchy and its impact on British national identity.

Simon Esmonde Cleary considers a little-known anniversary - the death in 388 of an imperial usurper who became a link-man between the factual eclipse of Roman Britain and the legendary world of King Arthur.

Robert Thorne investigates the nineteenth-century passion for views that has inspired the exhibition about to open at London's Barbican Art Gallery.