Europe

Though hymned by writers as an exemplum of Sparta's virtue, was Agesilaos the author as well as the spectator of her decline and fall?

Port wine and a queen for England from Braganza - commercial and cultural links strengthened the alliance steadily during the Age of Reason.

Resistance to Napoleon in the Iberian peninsula gave a little-known English general a unique opportunity to remould the Portuguese army.

'Bread and circuses' - the control and availability of grain was the key to political power and social stability in the ancient world.

Nigel Saul takes a look at the significance of the Norman conquest.

A Satanic conspiracy designed from the beginning to eliminate European Jewry? Or ad hoc responses aimed at replenishing Nazi zeal and producing convenient scapegoats? A fresh look at one of the most hideous episodes in world history.

In the early 1930s, when National Socialism became a mass movement, it drew strong support from the Protestant rural population. The emergence of the Third Reich and the advent of the Second World War saw a gradual shift in attitudes to the Nazi movement and regime. Gerhard Wilke looks at a rural community in northern Hesse.