Spain

During a period of European peace, Spain sought to establish control of the Mediterranean. Yet a disastrous attempt to oust the Ottomans from North Africa threatened to accelerate the westward advance of Islam. 

Kate Wiles highlights the Ottoman cartographer Piri Re’is and his charts, which blend navigation and art.

Eleventh-century Córdoba was at the heart of the rich culture of Muslim Andalusia. Among its greatest creative figures was Wallada, princess, patron and poet, and one of the most influential women writers in European history.

Jan Read describes how, between 1830 and 1840, two very different English travellers each produced a vivid account of Spanish scenes and personalities.

Goya lived from 1746 to 1828; Douglas Hilt describes how the artist's vigorous work ranges in subject from Court-paintings to the misfortunes of Unreason and War.

In his long series of novels, Galdos presents a vision of Spanish history from Napoleonic times until the 1880s. By Douglas Hilt.

Christian legend transformed St James, the Galilean fisherman, into a death-dealing crusader knight. Stephen Clissold describes how pilgrims from all over Europe, wearing his symbolic scallop-shells, have come to visit the splendid shrine that has been raised above his tomb.

C.R. Boxer profiles the learned and pious Duchess of Aveiro, a proud and forceful member of the Iberian aristocracy, who devoted her wealth to the propagation of the Gospel overseas.

In 1808, writes H.J. Barnes, a Scottish Benedictine played an important part in securing the return of Spanish troops from Denmark for service in the Peninsular War against Napoleon.