Volume 66 Issue 11 November 2016

British troops moving up to the attack during the Battle of Morval, 25 September 1916

The Permanent Stain of the Somme

Since the early 1960s, historians have shone a more positive light on the Battle of the Somme, writes Allan Mallinson. But we must not forget the excesses and failures of that terrible campaign.

The Tabernacle page of the Codex Amiantinus

The Codex Amiatinus: Britain's Lost Treasure

One of the grandest, certainly one of the largest, manuscripts produced in the medieval West, the Codex Amiatinus is often overlooked as an Anglo-Saxon treasure. Conor O’Brien shows how its makers used it to assert their identity and to establish their place firmly within the Christian world.

Local tribunal in the town clerk’s office, Tenant Street, Derby, c.1916-18.

Court of the Conscripts

Evidence from Britain’s First World War conscription tribunals reveals a surprisingly efficient and impartial system, as Rebecca Pyne-Edwards Banks asserts in this extract from her 2015 undergraduate dissertation prize-winning essay.

Is Laughter the Best Medicine?

Since it was founded in 1948, the issue of how Britons have laughed with – or at – the NHS reveals much about changes in society.