Cultural

Graham Goodlad asks if the media did more to support or to challenge politicians during the last century.

F.G. Stapleton examines the role played by the armed forces in the government of the Second Reich.

Peter Furtado previews a new exhibition devoted to J.M.W. Turner’s visits to the historic city in the first half of the 19th century.

James Williams considers hunting as the ideal pastime for the nobility in the sixteenth century.

Mikhail Safonov argues that the Beatles did more for the break up of totalitarianism in the USSR than Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Andrei Sakharov.

Simon Sebag Montefiore describes an unlikely project to create an English village in Belorussia involving Catherine the Great’s lover and the philosopher Jeremy Bentham and his brother.

The creation of the town of Saltaire exemplified the works of Victorian industrialists – philanthropy with an eye to profit.

Philip Mansel explores the City of the Sultans from 1453 onwards, and finds it characterised by a vibrant multi-culturalism until the Ottoman demise of 1922.

Jeremy Ashbee, from the Historic Royal Palaces, discusses a new programme at the Tower of London on punishment and imprisonment.