Volume 59 Issue 1 January 2009

Mark Bryant on the work of Soviet cartoonists engaged in the epic struggle against Nazi Germany.

In his twenties, Philippe Maurice was sentenced to death by guillotine for murdering a policeman. Saved by a change of government, he transformed himself through prison study into one of France’s leading medieval historians. William Smith reports.

Andrew Roberts introduces the remarkable memoir of Magdalene De Lancey, wife of Wellington’s chief of staff, who accompanied her husband on a campaign that climaxed in triumph and tragedy.

John Shepherd looks back to the turbulent Winter of Discontent, which heralded the demise of James Callaghan’s Labour government and paved the way for Margaret Thatcher and eighteen years of unbroken Conservative rule.

The rupture of a giant molasses tank in Boston just after the First World War caused devastation and led to the longest legal case in the city’s history.

Beautiful, clever and determined, Yolande of Aragon was at the heart of the diplomatic and military campaigns that united 15th-century France. Margaret L. Kekewich charts her career.

The visually spectacular Scottish capital witnessed fierce dynastic struggle before it welcomed the spirit of the Enlightenment, as Patricia Cleveland-Peck discovers.

The popular image of Socrates as a man of immense moral integrity was largely the creation of his pupil Plato. If we examine evidence of his trial, argues Robin Waterfield, a different picture emerges, of a cunning politician opposed to Athenian democracy.

Byron’s love affair with bare-knuckle boxing was shared by many of his fellow Romantics, who celebrated this most brutal of sports in verse. John Strachan examines an unlikely match.

Michael Dunne reflects on past US presidential Inaugurals, and the words which still resonate.