England

Sir Steven Runciman profiles a fabled Englishman, concerned with the political and military relationships between East and West.

Business with pleasure - Steven Gunn shows how the spectacle of the joust oiled the wheels of service and diplomacy as well as building up the court's image, not just for Henry VIII but for his dynasty-founding father as well.

Henry VIII spent astronomical amounts on military fortifications from the Scottish border to the South Coast of England. Marcus Merriman discusses the locations and architecture of these fortifications.

Maria Dowling considers the contribution of Henry VIII's queens in promoting new learning and religion at the Tudor court.

Dame Veronica Wedgwood turns to one of the great set pieces of English history – Charles I's January 1642 attempts to settle his differences with Parliament by the attempted arrest of five MPs.

Michael Foot celebrates the anniversary of the London Library with a tribute to its founder, Thomas Carlyle.

Roger Ashley uncovers the story of William Painter and the creative accounting which he employed as a clerk in one of Elizabeth's major spending departments

'Gaul in three parts' - Charles Giry-Deloison discusses how new scholarship is affecting our view of a fifteenth-century triangle of power and diplomacy in Northern Europe.

When money for Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists began to dry up in the late 1930s, he turned to novel schemes for fund-raising. James and Patience Barnes recount the intriguing story.

Pious nobleman or calculating humbug - what is the true characterisation of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester? Simon Adams sifts the motives for the patronage given to some of Elizabeth's sternest religious critics by her favourite courtier.