OLD FUSS & FEATHERS

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

I magine you’re in Nebraska, standing on North America’s Great Plains, where the broad Platte and Missouri rivers join on their way to the mighty Mississippi. It’s 1804, and in the blistering 36°C hea

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

CARMEN felt that the time had finally come to find out if her dear brother still lived. It had been a long and terrible second half decade in a 10-year war. Mexico had been traumatised, the factions o