Cultural

L. Curtis Musgrave describes how willingness among medieval students to battle for their rights’ that, during the course of years, helped to shape the modern university system.

Alan Haynes profiles a satirist, playwright and man of letters; Aretino led a prodigal and adventurous life in late Renaissance Italy.

Desmond Seward describes an outstanding colonial achievement of the Middle Ages.

J.A. Boyle describes how the Venetian traveller’s account of his travels sometimes tried his friends’ credulity.

David Jones profiles the man of whom Gibbon wrote: ‘the genius of Rome expired with Theodosius’.

Joseph M. Levine introduces the modern historians' forerunners; the men who invented the techniques and defined the problems of studying the past.

Stewart Perowne describes how, in the fourteenth century ‘the last of the Roman tribunes’, but one of the first of political liberators.

Prudence Hannay introduces Lady Granville, the younger daughter of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. She bridges the gulf between two very different social periods. Brought up among the most dashing personalities of ‘the Devonshire House set’, she died in the great age of mid-Victorian respectability.

When David Garrick, the most distinguished actor of his day, organised a splendid festival in honour of our greatest dramatist, writes Carola Oman, everything favoured him except the weather.

C.V. Wedgwood assesses the impact of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, 1869-1969