During the 1950s the Algerian struggle against France and its white settlers for independence inflamed passions and hatreds in both countries – while a small number of French men and women helped the Algerian liberation movement in defiance of their government and the sentiments of the majority. What made them do it?
Top gun? Alexander McKee assesses Henry VIII's prowess as a commander by land and sea in the light of his 1545 campaigns against the French.
Hugh Purcell examines the impact on either side of the Atlantic of Ken Burns’s tour de force, The Civil War.
David Day argues that deft footwork, personal PR and skilful use of both patronage and rhetoric were key elements in sustaining Britain's wartime PM in a position intrinsically far weaker than has often been supposed.
John Childs reviews
Barbara Donagan discusses the variable treatment of captives by captors between Crown and Parliament and what light it sheds on the manners and mores of the times.
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
