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Richard Hodges says the rubbish tips of Anglo-Saxon London and Southampton contain intriguing evidence of England’s first businessmen.

How did Washington Post cartoonist Clifford Kennedy Berryman – with a little help from Theodore Roosevelt – spark the creation of the world’s favourite soft toy?

Kevin Shillington looks at the impact on Africa of the slave trade, and its abolition 200 years ago this month.

Simon Lemieux explain why witch-hunting ended when so many Europeans supported it.

Robert Pearce introduces the First Reform Act and asks why parliamentary reform succeeded in 1832 when earlier reform bills had failed.

Robin Evans examines the connections between language, culture and national identity in 19th-century Galicia.

Larry Gragg digs beneath the glitzy surface of America’s ‘sin city’ to find out how this extravagant home of gambling and glamour came into being.

The Berlin Wall was a tangible symbol of the suppression of human rights under communism. Was it more convenient to the West than their rhetoric suggested?

Markus Bauer hopes that Romania’s membership of the European Union will enable it to face down the ghosts of its troubled twentieth-century past.

Tobias Grey discusses the impact of a controversial historical novel that has become a literary sensation in France, and asks some French-based commentators and historians for their reactions.