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On the centenary of Britain’s first Labour government, three recent histories cast a sympathetic eye over Ramsay MacDonald’s nine months in Number 10.

A short telephone call between Joseph Stalin and Boris Pasternak sealed the fate of a fellow writer. What exactly transpired during that fateful discussion remains subject to debate.

Lisbon’s convents were not just religious houses, but safe havens for the noblewomen of Portugal offering refuge from abusive husbands, unhappy marriages and a city swarming with ‘dogs and devils’.

The Norman Conquest brought French kings, language and culture across the Channel. What did that mean for medieval England?

Pet monkeys became a popular fashion accessory for the Victorians, found in homes across the country. But they were rarely living a life of luxury.

ASEAN was founded to promote peace between the nations of Southeast Asia. Incapable of moving with the times, what is the point of it?

In 1963 a border dispute between Morocco and Algeria escalated into the Sand War. What began as an ideological difference between two newly independent nations soon became personal.

Pacy and even-handed, Judgement at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia by Gary J. Bass is unlikely to be bettered as a portrait of the Tokyo trials.

Arriving in the West in the 19th century, the Buddha of legend was stripped of supernatural myth and recast as a historical figure. What do we really know about him?

Arrested over 400 times, Annie Parker found redemption in intricate cross-stitch and crochet using her own hair.