Military

War in the Middle Ages, by Philip Contamine. xvi + 387 pp. (Basil Black- well, £17.50).

Geoffrey Parker travels to Germany to revisit the sites of the 17th-century conflict that saw the decline of the Holy Roman Empire and Habsburgs.

Ralph Smith assesses the material available on the conflict in South-East Asia.

Conrad Russell finds that it is easier to understand why sheer frustration may have driven Charles to fight than to understand why the English gentry might have wanted to make a revolution against him.

Geoffrey Warner looks at the reasons for the delay in opening a second Allied Front.

Taken from two eight-volume enterprises marking the coming of age of African history, Michael Crowder looks at the African reactions to the European colonial presence, rather than with the doings of the Europeans themselves.

A new booklet on the Ministry of Information and its wartime messages to the British public.

The defeat of the Ottoman army outside the gates of Vienna in 1683 is usually regarded as the beginning of the decline of the Ottoman Empire. But how significant was it really, and for whom?