Business with pleasure - Steven Gunn shows how the spectacle of the joust oiled the wheels of service and diplomacy as well as building up the court's image, not just for Henry VIII but for his dynasty-founding father as well.
William Sessions on the connections of the charismatic courtier-poet who in a short and ill-fated life bridged the aristocratic Renaissance cultures of the Continent and the lifestyle of Henry VIII's court.
Akbar Ahmed offers the most timely review of how history and stereotype have often combined to make Western Orientalism a hindrance rather than a help in mutual understanding between two cultures.
End or beginning? Catherine Hills discusses how recent archaeology is filling in the gaps in our knowledge of 5th-and 6th-century Britain, fuelling the debate about just how important marauding invaders were to the changes that followed the legion's departure.
Richard Cavendish gives a snapshot of the work of the Cinema Theatre Association
In the light of the revised interest in the Soviet cinema Richard Taylor questions whether our traditional view of its output after 1917 as mere uplift (dreary or otherwise) is justified.
Stephen Jones on Victorian things, trends and fashions.
New Hampshire meat-packer to national symbol - Alton Ketchum recounts the rise and rise of Uncle Sam Wilson.
The author of a 4000-year-old hymn to one God has been portrayed as a mad idealist who turned the civilisation of the pharaohs upside down. John Ray discusses the man and his myth.
William Bird looks at how American business and commerce turned to the techniques of advertising and Hollywood to extol the merits of capitalism and free enterprise in response to the anti-corporate liberalism of the New Deal.
