Cultural

David Gaimster reveals the origins and contents of the British Museum's Secretum, a hidden repository of artefacts deemed pornographic and unfit for public gaze by Victorian curators.

Jonathan Marwil tells how the wars of the mid-19th century, in Europe and beyond, proved the perfect subject for a new medium to show its amazing potential.

Jane Griffiths and Edmund Weiner tell of plans to bring the Oxford English Dictionary up to date and how historians can help.

Paul Doolan describes the unique 400-year-long trading, intellectual and artistic contacts between the Dutch and the Japanese.

Esmond Wright recalls the life of the American philosopher, scientist and man of letters in his years in a street near Charing Cross.

Davis Hanson, VictorA History of Ancient GreeceSchmitt Pantel,Pauline and Orrieux, ClaudeSchmitt Pantel,Pauline and Orrieux, ClaudeThe Greek Achievement.
The Foundation of the Western WorldFreeman, Charles

The ancient library of Alexandria, destroyed by fire in AD270 is to be replaced by a new great library in the city to open this year, which will also serve as a local city museum.

In the 50 years after its opening in 1948 by dictator Enver Hoxhe, Albania's Institute of Archaology is now suffering from a funding shortage, but is still maintinaing its work and museum.

Michael Sturma finds parallels in contemporary accounts of abductions by space aliens with European narratives of captivity by Indians and Aboriginals in early America and Australia.