Medieval

Akbar Ahmed offers the most timely review of how history and stereotype have often combined to make Western Orientalism a hindrance rather than a help in mutual understanding between two cultures.

Geoffrey Clarke on netting the Poll Tax in Hastings.

by Christopher N.L. Brooke

Alexander Kazhdan considers the influence of totalitarianism and meritocracy in the Byzantine empire – and its relationship to the growth of the Russian and other successor states in the East.

David Stephens discerns an undercurrent of social protest and complaint beneath the usual exuberance of the bagpiper in medieval art.

Edited by Christopher Harper-Bill, Christopher Holdsworth and Janet L. Nelson

In the Middle Ages mill-owning was a sound investment and led to the invention of the windmill but, as Richard Holt points out, these halcyon times were of short duration.

Linda Pollock questions the assumption that younger brothers in the 16th and 17th-centuries were automatically stifled and frustrated, impotent in the family pecking order.