Literature

Justin Marozzi admires Hugh Kennedy’s article from 2004, which offers a nuanced portrait of the great Abbasid caliph, Harun al Rashid, much-mythologised hero of The Arabian Nights. 

The furore over Michael Gove's plans for the English curriculum shows our collective amnesia over our rich sources of literature and history, writes Paul Lay.

In the mid-nineteenth century, writes Roger Howell, the eminent historian of Spain, Mexico and Peru paid a most successful visit to the British Isles.

For the landed gentry at the end of the eighteenth century, writes J.F.G. Gornall, there were two main components in marriage. Jane Austen’s novels reveal how 'equal alliance' was at least as important as mutual affection.

A collateral relation of the famous diarist met with some alarming experiences in Dr. Johnson’s company during the 1780s, writes D. Pepys Whiteley.

Lionel Kochan writes how Turgenev's heroes serve to embody many different aspects of the rapidly changing scene in nineteenth century Russia.

The Grace Darling legend as an early manifestation of the terrifying power of sustained publicity; Richard Armstrong writes that she may well have been its first victim.

Unlike everybody else in his generation, writes Arnold Whitridge, Ralph Waldo Emerson understood, loved and castigated the two different, but closely related, strains in American life and represented the national conscience.

Though the Duke did not pretend to be a highly educated man, he had a real respect for books, and made resolute attempts to supervise the education of his son and heir. By Elizabeth Longford.

The newspaper was born when publishers in Protestant lands began to produce printed versions of the hand-written bulletins that had provided news for Europe’s elites. It was to prove a difficult birth, as Andrew Pettegree explains.