Social

Alan Taylor examines how the social concerns and ambitions of the new republic and those of the author of Last of the Mohicans intertwined - and how they gave him the canvas to become the United States' first great novelist.

Piling a clutch of French masterpieces into the back of his car, a young British Government official secured the paintings for himself-and a treasure-trove of others for the nation with borrowed money from a Paris under siege in the final hectic months of the First World War. The official was John Maynard Keynes - Anne Emberton tells the story of his coup de theatre and its impact on 20th-century British cultural politics.

Mack Holt argues that the early-modern obsession with tradition was sometimes a deliberate smokescreen for innovation.

Lesley Hall looks at sexuality as a recent recruit to historical studies – and at more than a century of argument and evasion

Before the mid-1800s many Americans did not dream of Christmas at all. Penne Restad tells how and why this changed – and played its role in uniting the US in social cohesion.

Edward Corp revalues the contribution, as emigre statesman and trend-setting art-collector, of one of the leading Jacobites at Saint-Germain.

Charles C. Noel illustrates how the remodelling of the Spanish capital reflected the new philosophical and cultural concerns of her rulers in the 'Age of Reason'. 

David Nash considers a cause celebre that tested tensions between pious tradition and a 'progressive' age.

Abigail Beach looks at constructing communities in the first half of the century