Political

Merle Ricklefs seeks clues for the future of the troubled archipelago nation in its distant past.

Stalin's security chief Lavrenti Beria was executed on December 23rd, 1953.

The treaty to bring parts of present-day Arizona and New Mexico into the United States was signed on December 30th, 1853.

Colin Cook looks at the political, philosophical and cultural impact of the idea of aviation in the first half of the 20th century.

A.D. Harvey recalls the career of the Swedish king whose assassination inspired a famous opera.

Jerry Brookshire shows that the ‘special relationship’ in 1945-51 was in safe, and curiously similar, hands.

Steve Smith shows that those who control the present are sometimes able to control interpretations of the past.

Bernard Porter points out similarities and contrasts between terrorism then and now.

Andrew Cook looks at the idea of the unaided assassin, and finds several 20th-century examples.

John Slatter celebrates the far-ranging contributions of Russian political émigrés to British life in the half-century before 1917.