Samurai rose to be global emblems of honour and courage, but their story doesn’t always match the myths they told about themselves, as a British Museum exhibition shows

ENGINEERING THE END OF MEDIEVAL WARFARE

Julián Casanova Franco 528pp. Crítica. €22.90. Giles Tremlett El Generalísimo Franco: Power, violence and the quest for greatness 528pp. Bloomsbury. £30. Juan Carlos I, with Laurence Debray Reconcilia

TARIQUE RAHMAN HAS LOST HIS VOICE. THAT ISN’T IDEAL for the aspiring leader of Bangladesh, the South Asian nation of 175 million. It’s also tinged with irony since, as his homeland’s de facto oppositi

In January 1979, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi fled Iran with “his wife, some jewels and a clod of earth”, says author Christopher de Bellaigue in the Financial Times. A measure of how the country’s Isla

A season of peace is the finest time to plant the seeds of war