Capturing the immediacy of fighting and the writhing bodies of soldiers, as well as keeping narrative clarity, proved enormously difficult for painters depicting battles before the advent of photography. Michael Hall reveals how they rose to the challenge

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

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

Our pick of the latest military history books

The powerful Greek city-state overreached itself and saw its influence decline as it failed to integrate conquered territories

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.