History Today

David Kirby discusses how Sweden's sudden rise to prominence in 17th-century Europe provoked much soul-searching both within and without the country on its nature, its culture and its destiny.

Roger Ashley uncovers the story of William Painter and the creative accounting which he employed as a clerk in one of Elizabeth's major spending departments

Peter Keighron and Mike Wayne review the field of historical documentary on television and ask what the future holds for this genre.

Hilary Turner unrolls the life and achievements of a fifteenth-century Florentine humanist whose self-taught efforts at acquiring Greek and wandering the Aegean contributed to Renaissance mapmaking and a wider understanding of the classical world.

Bernard Crick looks at the cost of historical mediations.

Ann Hills on Trinity House and new uses for lighthouses.

Anita Prazmowska unwinds the tangled skeins of grievance and interest that left the newly-emergent states east of Vienna unsure of who were friends or foes in the years following Versailles.

Christopher Bayly, organiser of a major new exhibition on the British and India at the National Portrait Gallery, discusses its making and the complexities of presenting the myths and realities behind the Raj.