Volume 57 Issue 2 February 2007

Markus Bauer hopes that Romania’s membership of the European Union will enable it to face down the ghosts of its troubled twentieth-century past.

Christine Riding looks at William Hogarth’s particular view of the street life of 18th-century London, and at what his interpretation presents in comparison with the artistic offerings of his Continental competitors.

Patricia Cleveland-Peck visits Gotland, the Baltic island where the Viking and medieval pasts are to be found round every corner.

For more than 600 black South Africans, there were to be no fine deeds serving for the glory of the British King and for Africa, no quick death in the heat of battle, simply a miserable end in the icy English Channel, as Caroline Coxon explains.

Tobias Grey discusses the impact of a controversial historical novel that has become a literary sensation in France, and asks some French-based commentators and historians for their reactions.

Meriel Larken takes the helm of the Yavari, a Victorian ship plying the highest navigable lake in the world.

Canaletto’s rich legacy of work made over a decade spent in England is the subject of a new exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery. Denise Silvester-Carr tells how the Venetian artist, long popular with the British, crossed the Channel to revive his fortunes.