Political

Friends in Youth: Choosing Sides in the English Civil War by Minoo Dinshaw views the conflict through the sad case of Bulstrode Whitelock and Edward Hyde.

The survival of the papacy has always been dependent on a precarious balancing act between the pope’s religious and secular powers.

Pelayo, King of Asturias, is Spain’s first national hero, credited with beginning the Reconquista with his victory at the Battle of Covadonga. What do we really know about him?

More than 100,000 people took up arms across the Holy Roman Empire in the spring of 1525. What drove them? And why were they ultimately crushed?

In 1920 the English writer Jerome K. Jerome set out the arguments in favour of Irish home rule.

In Augustus the Strong: A Study in Artistic Greatness and Political Fiasco, Tim Blanning looks for a legacy for the ‘incorrigible Saxon’.

Political reputations are forged by actions, but the long view of history can be hard to predict.

The vagaries of palace politics are notoriously difficult to record. Historians should pay attention to rumour.

Rebecca’s radical rural protests consumed South Wales in the 19th century. Who – or what – was she?

Disputing Disaster: A Sextet on the Great War by Perry Anderson relitigates the causes of the conflict through some of their key proponents.