Israel

The capture of the Holy City by the forces of the First Crusade was a victory against the odds, but its legacy has borne bitter fruit.

Outremer, the crusader kingdom, and its capital Jerusalem entered a golden age during the 1130s. Simon Sebag Montefiore portrays its extraordinary cast of kings, queens, conquerors and criminals.

Nigel Jones celebrates a great humanitarian who navigated the perilous paths between good and evil, a mission that was to cost him his life.

Christians have long relied on scribes’ copies of Biblical texts; J. K. Elliot describes how the Codex Sinaiticus, discovered in 1844, dates from the fourth century.

In 1947, as Zionist insurgents wreaked havoc, British special forces in Palestine adopted counterinsurgency tactics that attracted worldwide condemnation. David Cesarani discusses a scandal whose ramifications persist to this day.

With a solution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians as far away as ever, James Barker looks back to Britain’s occupation of the region and the efforts made by the future Viscount Montgomery to impose peace on its warring peoples.

Richard Cavendish remembers Israel's own Iron Lady, who became Prime Minister on March 17th 1969

James Barker reveals how parsimony and muddle in Whitehall in the first years of the British Mandate in Palestine almost led to disaster in August 1929.

The bombing of the King David Hotel – the British headquarters in Mandatory Palestine – killed 91. What role did terrorism play in the birth of the state of Israel?