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

Collecting fields often have holy grails, and in medieval illuminated manuscripts one is the Roman d’Alexandre or Romance of Alexander. The 20cm-tall book, written in Old French and illustrated with 1

Daniel Anlezark Constructing the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles 310pp. D. S. Brewer. £95. Janet Bately, Joseph C. Harris and Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe, with Susan Irvine, editors and translators The Old Engl

Exhibition of the week Samurai British Museum, London ...

You wouldn’t guess from the cover design—three songbirds silhouetted over swatches of picturesque Englishness—but Catherine Clarke’s A History of England in 25 Poems hits one of its sweet spots with a