Europe

Richard Cavendish storms the heights of Victorian Francophobia with the Palmerston Forts Society.

Kings knight knights, but who knights kings? Peter Linehan looks at how Alfonso XI got round the problem and in the process strengthened his hold on his kingdom.

Money makes the world go around: Kathleen Burk looks at how the Yankee dollar transferred influence from the Old World to the New.

Richard Cavendish introduces the Society which seeks to preserve 20th century buildings.

Womaniser, courtier, soldier and pioneer royal architect: Charles McKean investigates the rise and fall of a 'Renaissance man' in 16th-century Scotland.

Hitler's march into the demilitarised Rhineland heralded Churchill's 'gathering storm' – but could the Fuhrer's bluff have been called and the Second World War prevented? Sir Nicholas Hederson, who as Britain's ambassador in Washington during the Falklands crisis saw diplomatic poker eventually turn to war, offers a reassessment of the events of 1936.

A mission to the heathen? Hugh MacLeod looks at working-class attitudes towards organised Christianity in fin de siecle Berlin and other urban centres.

Max Beloff looks at what he (and other historians) got wrong (and right) about the future 50 years ago.

Anthony Gross traces the tenacious efforts of Henry VI's partisans to regain the throne from the House of York, and at a strange alliance that nearly paid off.