Political

After he fell from power, Bismarck became a mythical hero figure of the right. The legend of the ‘Iron Chancellor’ was wielded by militarists, conservatives, and eventually, Adolf Hitler.

Derek Wilson looks at the great religious reformer and asks why his life and work have seemed so ­significant to so many diverse people for almost 500 years.

David Carpenter introduces a major new resource for the understanding of 13th-century history.

Richard Cavendish recalls May 17th, 1257.

R.S. Taylor Stoermer takes a transatlantic perspective on the Anglo-Scottish Union of 1707.

John Jackson exhumes the extraordinary case of a middle-aged woman from Derby convicted of plotting to murder the Prime Minister.

Richard Cavendish explains how plans for a coup against King Hussein ibn Talal of Jordan eventually melted away on April 13th, 1957.

In 44 BC, the greatest of dictators was slain. The question of how Julius Caesar meant to use his supreme power has ever since been disputed.

The Renaissance political figure died on 12 March 1507.

Christopher J. Walker asks whether the two religions that frequently appear locked in an inevitable clash of civilizations in fact share more than has often been thought.