Rhiannon Davies: How did Suleyman the Magnificent become sultan of the Ottoman empire - the 10th man to hold that title?
The Lion House: The Coming of a King by Christopher de Bellaigue (The Bodley Head, 304 pages, £20)
Christopher de Bellaigue: Suleyman had a very easy rise to the sultanate because his father, Selim - known as “the Grim”- had no compunction about killing. Everyone else who could have become sultan had been dispatched. There was a tradition that had become law under Mehmed the Conqueror, Suleyman's great-grandfather, by which the Ottoman sultan could kill brothers and sons in order to ease the passage to the sultanate of a particular favoured son or brother. And, indeed, Suleyman benefited from this tradition - Selim killed several brothers and nephews and, however many sons he may have had, only Suleyman was allowed to survive.
Suleyman came to power in 1520, after his father had ruled for a very short of period of time. During his reign, Selim had almost doubled the extent of Ottoman territory - he defeated the Iranians, captured Egypt, and gained control of the Holy Land. Under him, the Ottomans went from being a large power with a very significant European presence to a much larger power with a more Eurasian identity.
Selim then died very unexpectedly, possibly of the plague, and Suleyman came to power unopposed. His accession was greeted with enormous relief by the European powers - and by Christendom as a whole - because the Christian powers were in enormous terror of Selim, and thought that Suleyman could only be an improvement.
In what ways did the threat of violence hang over Suleyman's relationship with his father?
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The Long Road Back - The Election Was Tough for the Conservatives but the Past Holds Clues on How Parties Can Return From the Brink
Itâs election night 1997, and Jeremy Paxman is grilling Tory grandee Cecil Parkinson. âYouâre the chairman of a fertiliser firm,â the famously pugnacious broadcaster asked Parkinson. âHow deep is the mess youâre in?â Twenty-seven years later, as the Conservative party comes to terms with another landslide defeat, itâs worth applying the same question to the present day. How does this result compare with previous devastating losses â not only those suffered by the Tories themselves, but also those experienced by the other major parties? And what can history teach us about the tools that politicians use to dig themselves out of the dung heap and set themselves back on the road to power?
"We Need a Meaningful Story for the New Generation - Our Composite Union"- There has been much talk of national renewal, and in due course we'll see what that means. But it felt like a watershed.
What a summer itâs been so far, with an astonishing election result. There has been much talk of national renewal, and in due course weâll see what that means. But it felt like a watershed. The new prime ministerâs dad was a toolmaker, his mum a nurse; the cabinet is majority comprehensive-educated, with more alumni of Parrs Wood High School than of Eton. Among commentators â not just on the left â thereâs been a growing feeling that 14 years of Tory rule, compounded by Brexit, have undermined what the great medieval historian Ibn Khaldun called asabiyyah: group feeling â the glue that makes societies work. And watching TV on election night, I found myself wondering whether, like sediment settling in a glass, the time has finally arrived for a new national narrative
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From Magna Carta to parliament, taxation to the law courts, the 13th and 14th centuries laid the foundations for the modern British state
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Ãthelstan is one of the greatest of all Anglo-Saxon monarchs. So why, asks Michael Wood, does the first king of the English remain so fiendishly elusive?
