Britain

Keith M. Brown questions the extent to which humanism and Renaissance courtliness had weaned the Stuart aristocracy from random acts of violence and taking the law into their own hands.

The British Medical Journal is 150 years old this autumn and has witnessed in its time a kaleidoscope of changing attitudes towards medicines, their ethics and efficiency. Peter Bartrip looks at its campaign against patent medicines at the turn of the century and the ambiguities of attitudes in the medical profession it reveals.

During the early days of UK involvement in World War II, official British films deliberately created a particular view of the air war, perhaps distorting our perceptions of some key phases.

'The greatest Instances of publick Spirit the Age has produced', but confessional strife between Anglicans and Nonconformists, as well as the bitter battles of Whigs and Tories, was the stimulus for an educational programme for the poor. Craig Rose investigates.

Michael Diamond discusses what popular songs and singers had to say about Britain's politicians in the 1880s and 1890s.

Rowan Williams examines the career of the 2nd-century theologian whose powerful and idiosyncratic vision illuminates the tensions and development of the early Church.

Bernard Porter on espionage, past and present.

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