Political

In Patria: Lost Countries of South America, Laurence Blair explores nine nations, dissolved or imagined, and what they tell us about Latin America.

Where fraught national histories are concerned, do policies of remembrance and education work, or is it better to wipe the slate clean?

Can The Last Dynasty: Ancient Egypt from Alexander the Great to Cleopatra and The Fall of Egypt and the Rise of Rome: A History of the Ptolemies fashion a finale for the pharaohs?

Ancient Roman election advice suggested some uncomfortable campaign strategies. Evidence from Pompeii suggests many candidates followed it enthusiastically.

How the first Conservative leadership election modernised the party in the 1960s.

The Cold War forged new international relationships in which physical distance seemed overcome by ideological proximity. In North Korea, East Germany found a fellow traveller – and a fellow victim.

In A Great Disorder: National Myth and the Battle for America, Richard Slotkin attempts to untangle the stories that the US tells itself about race, colonialism and the Civil War. Is it a lost cause?

The acute housing crisis of mid-Victorian Britain generated stormy opinions about the nature of state intervention and the need for ‘wholesome despotism’.

On 1 October 1868 King Mongkut – who reigned as Rama IV – passed away having trod a delicate course to keep Thailand free of European empires.

The Scapegoat: The Brilliant Brief Life of the Duke of Buckingham by Lucy Hughes-Hallett picks through the fragments of George Villiers, James VI & I’s favourite mistake.