Literature

I.F. Clarke offers a study of the “pride, pomp and circumstance of glorious war” as foreseen by imaginative writers and artists.

From Piketty’s trumpet-blast to the great deeds of medieval saints, ten leading historians tell us about their best reads from 2014.

The late 17th century saw the arrival of a new way of buying and selling books. Amy Bowles explores the impact of the book auction on those with a commercial and scholarly interest in the printed word.

During the opening years of the twentieth century, writes I.F. Clarke, many fantastic forecasts of the coming World War aroused widespread interest and alarm.

Crevecoeur fought under Montcalm at Quebec in 1759 and, writes Stuart Andrews, afterwards settled in New York and Pennsylvania.

An inherent tension between the past and the present becomes explicit when we make our assessments of historical figures, argues Suzannah Lipscomb.

Justin Marozzi admires Hugh Kennedy’s article from 2004, which offers a nuanced portrait of the great Abbasid caliph, Harun al Rashid, much-mythologised hero of The Arabian Nights. 

The furore over Michael Gove's plans for the English curriculum shows our collective amnesia over our rich sources of literature and history, writes Paul Lay.

In the mid-nineteenth century, writes Roger Howell, the eminent historian of Spain, Mexico and Peru paid a most successful visit to the British Isles.

For the landed gentry at the end of the eighteenth century, writes J.F.G. Gornall, there were two main components in marriage. Jane Austen’s novels reveal how 'equal alliance' was at least as important as mutual affection.