History Today

Lorna Walker discusses the iconography of images decorating the Cloister in Monreale and the debate about social order that it contains.

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.

The role of British architects in 19th century Russia: Jeremy Howard and Sergei Kuznetsov reveal how the pleasantest sight that some of Dr Johnson's Scotsmen saw was not the high road to England but the sea passage to Russia, where they found fame and fortune making a key contribution to urban remodelling and architecture.

John Carr questions whether re-enacting classical theatre at historic sites is a good thing.

Denise Silvester-Carr explores Eltham Palace and its connections with the Courtauld family.

Peter Stead looks at how a film that had British audiences chuckling, had a tarter subtext on social and class divisions at the end of the 1950s

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.

Climate, disease and the relationship between them fascinated 18th-century observers on both sides of the Atlantic. Ronald Rees explores the debate and its significance.

Pauline Croft on why court history is relevant to the 1990s.