Social

Robert Pearce introduces the First Reform Act and asks why parliamentary reform succeeded in 1832 when earlier reform bills had failed.

Robin Evans examines the connections between language, culture and national identity in 19th-century Galicia.

Larry Gragg digs beneath the glitzy surface of America’s ‘sin city’ to find out how this extravagant home of gambling and glamour came into being.

The Berlin Wall was a tangible symbol of the suppression of human rights under communism. Was it more convenient to the West than their rhetoric suggested?

Markus Bauer hopes that Romania’s membership of the European Union will enable it to face down the ghosts of its troubled twentieth-century past.

Tobias Grey discusses the impact of a controversial historical novel that has become a literary sensation in France, and asks some French-based commentators and historians for their reactions.

The Asian influenza epidemic of 1957 killed more than 16,000 people in Britain and more than a million globally. It exposed the fragility of the antibiotic age.

Jörg Friedrich’s horrifying account of the Allied bombing raids caused a stir on its first publication in Germany. Now it has been translated into English, and York Membery has canvassed some leading British historians for their views.

Marius Ostrowski explains why the Church was so dominant in the Middle ages, but also sees traces of a growing secularism.

George Bernard Shaw influenced the Abdication Crisis with a short play that has been forgotten in the last seventy years.