Social

R.J.A.Wilson accounts for the making of Roman Britain.

'Stirring up divine discontent' by education to effect a transformation of the social order became the credo of one of Victorian Christian Socialism's most colourful characters, far outpacing the more temperate aims of its founders.

Attempts by returning First World War servicemen to unionise were portrayed in intelligence reports as part of a sinister Bolshevik prelude to revolution in Britain.

Nicholas Orme shows how Catholic and Protestant reformers alike campaigned rigorously against medieval attitudes to prostitution which were far less restrictive and oppressive than is often supposed.

Service to the Crown might bring hereditary office and a title for the upwardly mobile of Louis X/V's France, but not acceptance by the traditional 'aristocracy of the sword'. Close scrutiny reveals attempts to incorporate a new breed of noble into an essentially static society.

The newly-found voices of the slaves caught up in the American Civil War, and heard through letters to their families, are a testimony to their tenacity and unity in the struggle for emancipation.

'Take but degree away... and hark what discord follows' was a Tudor and Stuart commonplace but the neatness and fixity of what we think of as their social order is a creation of historians.

Jack-of-all-trades and master of a period of English history which he both lived through and epitomised.

Existing elements of pagan midwinter rites fused with the developing theology of Christmas in an appeal to the senses of both sacred and lay.