Cultural

At first the English withstood the Norman attack of 1066. But soon they succumbed to the invaders, as did their virile language of record. An article by H.R. Loyn.

J. H. M. Salmon looks at Romantic literary interpretations of Oliver Cromwell.

In the second article of The Resurgence of Islam Dr. Leila Ahmed, an Egyptian scholar who has taught at the United Arab Emirates University, examines the Islamic past - that of the Prophet Muhammad and the first four 'right-guarded caliphs' - to which the leaders of the current resurgence in the Islamic world seek a return.

The two articles that follow provide the background to the resurgence that is sweeping the Islamic world from Morocco to Malaysia. In the first, Professor Enayat of the University of Tehran considers why there should be a resurgence of Islam at this particular point in time and whether it is different from those that have preceded it.

Picture postcards may seem a commonplace means of communication, but, when they first came into use, they caused a revolution in people’s writing habits. T.J. Brady writes how they led to the creation of a considerable industry and became the subject of a collecting craze almost unparallelled.