Volume 59 Issue 4 April 2009

Suzannah Lipscomb looks beyond the stereotypes that surround our most infamous monarch to ask: who was Henry VIII and when did it all go wrong? 

White South Africans who fought in the long ‘Border War’ to maintain apartheid now find themselves in a country run by their former enemies. Gary Baines examines their continuing struggle to come to terms with the conflict and their efforts to have their voices heard.

As Europe polarised between Right and Left in the 1930s, many artists and authors nailed their reputations to either extreme. Others, says Nigel Jones, took refuge in the ‘inner emigration’ of silence. Even in stable Britain, writers felt compelled to take a stand – often in the service of the secret state.

In the first millennium, Christianity spread east from Palestine to Iraq, and on to India and China, becoming a global religion accepting of, and accepted by, other faiths. But with the Mongol invasions of the 13th century, Christianity’s eastern journey came to an end. Philip Jenkins recovers this lost history.

St George only gained popularity in England in the 15th century and Richard the Lionheart had nothing to do with his adoption as the nation’s patron saint.

The life of a most pious Christian saint, who died on April 21st, 1109.

As a new exhibition on the Baroque opens at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Joanna Norman looks at this age of magnificence.

Friedrich Engels financed the research behind his friend Karl Marx’s epic critique of the free market, Das Kapital. His role is now being recognised.