Cultural

The recent recovery of large quantities of porcelain from the South China seas highlights eighteenth-century Europe's insatiable desire for tableware from the Orient.

'Where's there's muck, there's money'...but there was also culture and patronage of the arts in nineteenth-century Manchester and Leeds. By Janet Wolff And Caroline Arscott.

Ann Hills examines the reconstruction of Singapore's 19th-century buildings to accommodate tourism.

The unlikely setting of the East London suburb of Walthamstow was a centre for the infant British cinema industry at the turn of the century. Margaret O'Brien and Julia Holland chart its course, aided by interviews with and recollections of local people, many of whom were involved as 'extras' in the early silent films.

Victoria to Freud, Volume 2, The Tender Passion

Existing elements of pagan midwinter rites fused with the developing theology of Christmas in an appeal to the senses of both sacred and lay.

Ian Mitchell explores the Märkisches Museum devoted to the history of Berlin and the Mark Brandenburg.

Susan Bayly looks into an Indian Museum in the southern state of Tamil Nadu.

Peter Stansky takes a look at the increasing number of houses either privately owned or owned by the National Trust being opened to the public.

Cometh the hour, cometh the man - is this the secret of Braudel's fame as the Victor Hugo of French history?