Interwar period

'A life of action and constant fidelity to a set of ideas': Max Beloff takes a fresh look at the career of Leo Amery with the publication of the latter's second volume of diaries – a man by no means the stereotype of an inter-war Conservative politician.

The Xi'an Incident, a tragi-comic sequence of mutiny and kidnapping, marked a crucial stage in the struggle between Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists and Mao Zedong’s Communists.

Buying and selling with our 'kith and kin' was the hallmark of an intensive inter-war campaign for the idea of Empire.

Gerald Kennedy shows how a fear of revolution and the growing strength of organised labour created tensions in Britain after the end of the First World War. Men such as 'Woodbine Willie' attempted to defuse the situation by preaching the gospel of 'Christian Socialism' at mass meetings across the country.

Helen Graham on the political coalitions in Spain in the 1930s and their role in blocking Fascism.

Paul Preston follows the unsettled road leading to the clash between the Republicans and Nationalists.

David Low, the cartoonist, met Horatio Blimp, a retired Colonel, in a Turkish bath near Charing Cross in the early 1930s. Many agree with C.S. Lewis that Colonel Blimp was 'the most characteristic expression of the English temper in the period between the two wars.'

Chris Cook continues our special feature on the Work Ethic.