Feature

India cast off the monarchy in 1950, but the Nehru-Gandhi family have become republican royalty. How did one dynasty take centre stage in the world’s largest democracy?

After he fell from power, Bismarck became a mythical hero figure of the right. The legend of the ‘Iron Chancellor’ was wielded by militarists, conservatives, and eventually, Adolf Hitler.

John F. Kennedy’s commitment to put a man on the Moon in the 1960s is remembered as a utopian vision. In reality, it was a purely political project that he soon came to regret.

John Plowright examines the career of one of the key ministers in Attlee’s postwar governments.

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?

The Asian influenza epidemic of 1957 killed more than 16,000 people in Britain and more than a million globally. It exposed the fragility of the antibiotic age.

While Hezbollah often hits the headlines, its history is less familiar. The emergence of Shia militancy in Lebanon was centuries in the making.

Forget Tony Blair or Margaret Thatcher, says Klaus Larres; Winston Churchill was the supreme prevaricator when it came to giving up power.

The political fallout of the Suez Crisis was keenly felt at home, but how did it change Britain’s approach to the Middle East? And what did it mean for the British Empire?