Volume 33 Issue 12 December 1983

Keith Robbins ponders on how historians can construct a United Kingdom.

In his book, The Compleat Angler, Izaak Walton, who died three hundred years ago this month, provided generations of anglers with a technique manual, a pastoral idyll - and an elegant apologia for their pastime. An Article by John Lowerson.

Susan M. Sherwin-White discusses historical works relating to the Hellenistic Period.

Was Martin Luther the author of a 'Moderate Reformation'? Or was his progeny to prove a 'Radical Reformation'? An article by Michael Mullett.

Martin Luther, explains Lyndal Roper, summarised his view of sex, marriage and motherhood in a letter he wrote to three nuns in 1524, 'A women does not have complete mastery over herself. God created her body that she should be with a man and bear and raise children'.

At the start of the reign of Charles II, government was the King's business and factions contested for the monarch's ear. The constitutional changes in later Stuart England added a new, parliamentary dimension to faction. But it did not disappear.

'It's no fish ye're buying - it's men's lives', wrote Sir Walter Scott, and looking at the fishing industry in Scotland in the last century involves a vivid recreation of the hard life of the isolated fishing communities, their work and their family life.

1921 was an annus terribilis for the fishing communities of north-east Scotland - and the despair of the fisher folk, explains John Lowe Duthie, led them to religious fervour for consolation.