England

John Cummins uses the 400th anniversary of Sir Francis Drake's death to reassess the man, his life and the legends surrounding him.

A budding front-bench politician and his mistress ... not a tract for our times but an 1860s relationship recovered and reconstructed from love letters by the politician's biographer, Patrick Jackson.

Richard Cust reassesses the Stuart monarch's political style.

John Guy doubts whether policy was ever imposed on the most wilful of kings.

Monks and nuns living together: not a cause for scandal but, as Barbara Mitchell explains, an intriguing window onto the variety of monastic life - under the aegis of remarkable abbesses - before the Conquest.

Graham Seel uncovers their pivotal and sometimes underhand role in the struggle between king and parliament.

We eavesdrop on Ian Dawson as he interrogates the sources and wonders whether the first Tudor was really so mysterious.

Graham Seel reassesses the career of Oliver Cromwell's predecessor as Parliamentary Commander in the 1640s, Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex, and argues that he has been harshly judged by English Civil War historians.

Penelope Corfield delights in the traditions and splendours of the Apothecaries Hall in the capital.