Leading historians share the texts that have inspired and informed their work

By spring 1941, the Afrika Korps was advancing across eastern Libya towards Egypt and the Suez Canal. But a dusty port town lay in their path

Who, today, remembers Robert Vas? His Refuge England (1959), a partly autobiographical account of a Hungarian migrant trying to make sense of London—its confusing streets and dizzying profusion of sig

John P. Murphy New Deal Art 336pp. Thames and Hudson. Paperback, £19.99. Seymour Fogel’s “Wealth of the Nation”, installed in 1942 in a federal building in Washington DC, depicts a group of workers en

In 1939, at the start of the Second World War, the government planned to evacuate 1.5 million civilians, mostly school children, mothers and other vulnerable people, from cities at risk of bombing to

12 MARCH