When General Francisco Franco died on 20 November 1975 – 39 years after the start of the brutal civil war that brought him to power – the prospect of a bloodless transition to democracy in Spain appea

Over a long career, John Hardman has specialised to great effect in teasing out, from speeches, decrees, minutes, memoranda, letters, diaries and unsent drafts, the varied moods of French political de

A Spanish novelist’s portrait of Pope Francis

Our pick of the latest military history books

All serious scholarship on ancient Sparta has to be conducted within the penumbra of the ‘mirage Spartiate’, a French term coined in 1933 to describe the problem posed by idealised accounts of Sparta.

Uncover the all-conquering Hun king whose nomadic horde terrorised Rome