Andrew Boyd tells the story of the ill-fated mission of a papal nuncio whose blundering zeal doomed the hopes of Irish Catholics of profiting from the civil war between Charles I and his Parliament in England.
Janet Hartley discusses the mixed responses of Russia's populations to Napoleon's great gamble on an invasion and the part they played in the eventual French catastrophe.
Merle Ricklefs re-examines the impact of the Dutch in the East Indies and finds in the response of the Javanese a more complex story than that of technological superiority beating down a military-primitive response.
Roger Ashley uncovers the story of William Painter and the creative accounting which he employed as a clerk in one of Elizabeth's major spending departments
Anita Prazmowska unwinds the tangled skeins of grievance and interest that left the newly-emergent states east of Vienna unsure of who were friends or foes in the years following Versailles.
Jeffrey Grey on how computers are profiling Australia's First World War combatants
During the early days of UK involvement in World War II, official British films deliberately created a particular view of the air war, perhaps distorting our perceptions of some key phases.
Two new books on the impact of the Great War
Sentiment, profit and commercial laissez-faire bound the merchants of England's busiest port ever closer to the rebel confederacy across the Atlantic after 1861. John D. Pelzer explains how and why.
Ross Hassig questions whether the rationale behind the fighting in Mexico which Cortes encountered in 1519 has not been misunderstood.
