Medieval

M.L. Clarke describes how, from the seventh century onwards, Rome attracted from Britain faithful pilgrims and churchmen with business to transact.

Michael Greenhalgh describes how a masterpiece of fifteenth-century Italian art was for a long time used as an ashtray, only to pass into the national collections.

William Seymour describes how a large area of Dorset and Wiltshire, abounding in deer, was hunted by King John and granted to Robert Cecil by James I.

Dianne Ebertt Beeaff explains the disappearance from view of Anglo-Saxon family names from modern English life.

As advocate, diplomatist and historian, writes Neil Ritchie, Aeneas Silvius was a much-travelled international figure before he became Pope.

York Minster was dedicated in 1472 after two and a half centuries of building. L.W. Cowie describes how it still affords insight into medieval life.

For centuries before independence in 1877 the Romanian principalities led a precarious life of their own, writes Kenneth Johnstone.

Nicolas Cheetham describes how the Fourth Crusaders captured Byzantium in 1204 and French noblemen created feudal principalities in Southern Greece.

Windmills abounded in England from the twelfth century onwards. Terence Paul Smith describes how their bodies usually revolved on a vertical post so that the miller could face the sails into the wind.

Over four centuries the University of Padua attracted a large number of foreign students, writes Alan Haynes, among whom the English were prominent.