Europe

The Ransom Business

Stephen Clissold describes a world of Christian slaves and Moslem masters in North Africa, from the twelfth to the nineteenth centuries.

The Patronage of Clement VI

Philip E. Burnham Jr. describes how the court of Clement VI at Avignon became a model of humanism and scholarship for princely courts elsewhere in Europe.

Heavenly Horses

Gerald Morgan describes how the history of Europe and Asia was changed when Mongolian horses were adopted for migration.

Legendary Alexander

George Woodcock describes how, during the centuries after his death, Alexander became many things to many peoples and in countries often distant from those that saw his exploits.

St. Wenceslas of Bohemia

Cecil Parrott describes how the elderly monarch from a Christmas carol was based on the character of a young and vigorous sovereign, assassinated on his birthday by his own brother.

Romantic Bohemia

Joanna Richardson describes how, during the 1830s, the world of Bohemia offered a warm and fruitful climate to artists and writers.

The Black Death, Part I

Philip Ziegler describes how, in the mid-fourteenth century, about one third of the population of Western Europe perished from bubonic plague.

The Fighting Galley

Bryan Waites describes how, both in the Mediterranean and in the Atlantic, the medieval powers of Europe found that the oared galley was a very effective weapon of war.

The Paris Peace Conference, Part II

Norman Bentwich analyses the diplomatic battle between the Soviet Union and the Western Powers that gradually came into the open in Paris in 1946, and foreshadowed the Cold War.

The Paris Peace Conference, Part I

Norman Bentwich recalls the official meetings in Paris of 1946, which were concerned with the future of Germany’s former allies in Europe. At these protracted sessions the conflict between the Soviet Union and the Western Powers gradually came into the open.