England

Oriental Influences on English Taste

John Villiers describes the rich exchange of artistic ideas between Europe and the Far East during the seventeenth, eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. 

John of Salisbury

A European rather than merely an Englishman, John embodied the new humanism that permeated twelfth-century thought, by J.J.N. McGurk.

The Horse: England's Sacred Beast?

The English aversion to eating horse flesh, recently highlighted in a number of food scandals, dates back to the coming of Christianity, as Jordan Claridge explains.

Four Centuries of Shakespearean Production

F.E. Halliday finds that every age, from the first Elizabethan to the present one, has evolved its own methods of producing Shakespeare; sometimes with results that might have surprised the dramatist.

A Fifteenth-Century Merchant family

A solid middle-class clan who exported English wool to foreign markets, the Celys have left behind them a graphic record of their private affairs and shrewd commercial dealings, as Alison Hanham here finds.