Europe

British attitudes to witchcraft during the Tudor era tended to be less extreme than those of contemporary Europeans, argues Victoria Lamb.

During the Napoleonic Wars Britain occupied the strategically important island of Sicily. Most of its inhabitants, tired of long-distance Bourbon rule, welcomed the arrangement, but their monarch did not, as Graham Darby explains.

As the Eurozone countries wrestle with the fate of the single currency, Mark Ronan discovers parallels in Wagner’s Ring cycle.

Nigel Jones traces the chequered history of European referendums and asks why they appeal as much to dictators as to democrats.

In April 1782 the first of a series of revolutions that were to change the shape of Europe broke out in the republic of Geneva. It was fuelled by a long rift between advocates of the French Enlightenment and opponents of Franco-Catholic imperialism, as Richard Whatmore explains.

Britain’s recent disputes with the European Union are part of a long historical narrative, argues James Ellison – but it is not the whole story.

After decades of advance, democracy in Europe has begun to look curiously vulnerable.

Ian Bradley looks at the life of Vincent Priessnitz, pioneer of hydrotherapy, whose water cures gained advocates throughout 19th-century Europe and beyond and are still popular today.

The Treaty of Versailles, negotiated by the fractious Allies in the wake of the First World War, did not crush Germany, nor did it bring her back into the family of nations. Antony Lentin examines a tortuous process that sowed the seeds of further conflict.

With the New Year release of Steven Spielberg’s film adaptation of Michael Morpurgo’s War Horse Gervase Phillips explores the true story of the horses and mules that served the British army during the First World War.