Europe

J.W.N. Watkins illustrates how the great individualist thinkers of the 17th century had a profound effect upon the development of modern Europe.

His refusal to learn by experience, C.S. Forester suggests, was largely responsible for Napoleon’s ultimate failure

Sentimentality about Christmas in Britain is a Victorian legacy that owes much to the influence of Germany. The sense of outrage in December, 1914, at encountering a Christmas tarnished by the ugliness of war was common to both countries.

How did the Allied Powers become committed to fighting the First World War on the Western Front, so that Germany, until near the end, always held the initative? John Terraine investigates.

The Battle of Milvian Bridge is remembered as the moment when Constantine I secured the future of Christianity. The real turning point took place a few months earlier.

British attitudes to witchcraft during the Tudor era tended to be less extreme than those of contemporary Europeans, argues Victoria Lamb.

During the Napoleonic Wars Britain occupied the strategically important island of Sicily. Most of its inhabitants, tired of long-distance Bourbon rule, welcomed the arrangement, but their monarch did not, as Graham Darby explains.

As the Eurozone countries wrestle with the fate of the single currency, Mark Ronan discovers parallels in Wagner’s Ring cycle.

Nigel Jones traces the chequered history of European referendums and asks why they appeal as much to dictators as to democrats.

In April 1782 the first of a series of revolutions that were to change the shape of Europe broke out in the republic of Geneva. It was fuelled by a long rift between advocates of the French Enlightenment and opponents of Franco-Catholic imperialism, as Richard Whatmore explains.