Social

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. 

While Hezbollah often hits the headlines, its history is less familiar. The emergence of Shia militancy in Lebanon was centuries in the making.

Sylvia Pankhurst was taken to the women's jail at Holloway on October 24th, 1906.

Graham Noble examines the origins and traces the consequences of the notorious Edict of 1492.