Crime

The last years of Charles II saw London a hotbed of political and religious conflict, exploited by a 'hit squad' who brought a reign of terror to the city.

Alistair Goldsmith describes how Glasgow's police force endeavoured to preserve the city's standing as it played host to a series of international set-pieces.

Simon Smith questions our image of buccaneers as bloodthirsty opportunists claiming they were often highly organised and efficient businessmen in the waters of the Caribbean.

Richard Evans looks at the social and intellectual pressures that forced Germany to rethink how and why it punished wrongdoers.

Did Andres Aranda Ortiz die for his crimes or his anarchist beliefs in a Barcelona prison just before Christmas 1934? Chris Ealham considers an episode that lays bare the social and political tensions of a Spain on the eve of civil war.

John Powell chronicles the activities of a Midlands ring of counterfeiters whose activities open a window on the economic and social ambiguities of late Georgian England.

Bovver boys in Athens and Rome? Apparently so, according to Robert Garland, who uncovers tales from life and legend to show how high jinks could turn to blows in the classical world.

Keith M. Brown questions the extent to which humanism and Renaissance courtliness had weaned the Stuart aristocracy from random acts of violence and taking the law into their own hands.

Iain McCalman discusses how politically motivated was the blackguarding by low life of high society in the Regency period.