Medieval

Andrew Martindale explains why Renaissance Sienese doctored the history of a 12th-century papacy when decorating their new city hall.

When did England become England? Was Alfred really the great ruler of all the English - or was it just a question of clever Wessex PR? Patrick Wormald investigates the myths and realities of unification in Anglo-Saxon England.

Warwick Bray on a new illustrated edition of a colonial 'Domesday Book' for the Aztec world.

Valery Rees surveys the life of the ruler who put 15th-century Hungary on the map, both culturally and geographically, but whose efforts may have put an intolerable strain on the body politic.

Middle Ages Europe

Brent Shaw offers a reassessment of the women martyrs and heroines whose activities on behalf of the faith provoked unsettled admiration from the church fathers.

An absurd procession of chivalry or mad mass charges? Analysis of fighting in the Middle Ages has become more subtle than either of these scenarios, argues Sean McGlynn.

Anthony Pollard explains how the rivalry of two great Northern families contributed to civil war in fifteenth-century England.

Vivian Nutton reviews

Every commune had to have one - Diana Webb explains how the cult of a holy man or woman and civic PR went hand-in-hand in medieval Italy.