Political

The current House of Commons is notable for the number of members who are also historians. Will Robinson welcomes this trend, while reminding us of Parliament’s sometimes troubled relationship with its own past.

A monarch’s divine ability to cure scrofula was an established ritual when James I came to the English throne in 1603. Initially sceptical of the Catholic characteristics of the ceremony, the king found ways to ‘Protestantise’ it and to reflect his own hands-on approach to kingship, writes Stephen Brogan.

During the disturbed tenth century in Western Europe, royal power held its ground and extended its authority only in Germany-whence the Emperor Otto III sallied into Italy with the purpose of reviving Roman classical tradition and combining it with the dream of a Christian Commonwealth under imperial aegis. By J.B. Morrall.

In 1538, believing his kingdom to be under threat, Henry VIII brutally settled scores dating back to the dynastic conflicts of the 15th century, as Desmond Seward explains.

Richard Cavendish remembers the assassination of Caliph Ali, on January 24th, 661.

Richard Cavendish describes Edward the Confessor's canonisation, on January 5th, 1161.

The death of Cabinet government has been a near constant theme of British politics in the 20th century. But it came closer to reality under the premiership of Tony Blair, argues Archie Brown.

Outremer, the crusader kingdom, and its capital Jerusalem entered a golden age during the 1130s. Simon Sebag Montefiore portrays its extraordinary cast of kings, queens, conquerors and criminals.

Few English monarchs have such a poor reputation as Henry VI. Yet he was held in high regard by the Tudors, says Michael Hicks, despite losing the Wars of the Roses.

Between 1954 and 1958 Ann Moyal was a research assistant to the press baron Max Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook. Here she offers a personal recollection of the political mover and shaker as he embarked on a new phase of his career as a historian of his times.