Social

Since the 1860s Women's History has sought to recapture the experiences of a previously submerged half of the population. Sarah Newman looks to the feminist struggle to overcome prejudice and win the most basic right of all.

Alan Taylor examines how the social concerns and ambitions of the new republic and those of the author of Last of the Mohicans intertwined - and how they gave him the canvas to become the United States' first great novelist.

Piling a clutch of French masterpieces into the back of his car, a young British Government official secured the paintings for himself-and a treasure-trove of others for the nation with borrowed money from a Paris under siege in the final hectic months of the First World War. The official was John Maynard Keynes - Anne Emberton tells the story of his coup de theatre and its impact on 20th-century British cultural politics.

Mack Holt argues that the early-modern obsession with tradition was sometimes a deliberate smokescreen for innovation.

Lesley Hall looks at sexuality as a recent recruit to historical studies – and at more than a century of argument and evasion

Before the mid-1800s many Americans did not dream of Christmas at all. Penne Restad tells how and why this changed – and played its role in uniting the US in social cohesion.

Edward Corp revalues the contribution, as emigre statesman and trend-setting art-collector, of one of the leading Jacobites at Saint-Germain.

Charles C. Noel illustrates how the remodelling of the Spanish capital reflected the new philosophical and cultural concerns of her rulers in the 'Age of Reason'.