From the late 1920s onwards, Italian cultural diplomacy in Portugal was responsible for an increasing number of activities and initiatives directed at the Portuguese intellectual public. From Mussolini's perspective, the ideological ground shared by the Salazar regime and Italian Fascism meant that it was important for Italy to nourish links and exchanges with Portugal. This article examines cultural diplomacy in Lisbon, using one particular centre as the focus of analysis: the Italian Cultural Institute and its networking activities with intellectuals in the Portuguese regime. Within these transnational intellectual networks, a prominent role was taken by the Institute's successive directors between 1928 and 1945. These figures varied substantially in their biographical trajectories and seem to have exemplified the idiosyncrasies and contradictions of Fascist cultural policy in Portugal, which was one of a range of attempts, never fully realised, to export the idea of Italian Fascism.

The COVID-19 (Coronavirus disease of 2019) pandemic has led to intense conversations about ventilator allocation and reallocation during a crisis standard of care. Multiple voices in the media and multiple state guidelines mention reallocation as a possibility. Drawing upon a range of neuroscientific, phenomenological, ethical, and sociopolitical considerations, the authors argue that taking away someone’s personal ventilator is a direct assault on their bodily and social integrity. They conclude that personal ventilators should not be part of reallocation pools and that triage protocols should be immediately clarified to explicitly state that personal ventilators will be protected in all cases.

The ephemeral nature of religious practices and rituals makes them challenging to trace in the archaeological record of Late Neolithic hunter-gatherer communities in central and eastern Europe. A ritual feature with Bell Beaker elements discovered in north-eastern Poland, a region occupied by hunter-gatherer groups of the Neman cultural circle, is thus exceptional. Its syncretic character indicates its role as a harbinger of wider cultural change that led to the emergence in this region of the western group of the Bronze Age Trzciniec cultural circle.

The flageolet – a woodwind instrument closely akin to the recorder – achieved considerably popularity in nineteenth-century England. It was predominantly an instrument of the amateur musician, and its story becomes a mirror of the musical society in which the instrument flourished.

An account of the organology of the flageolet in both its English and French forms, and of its evolution into double, triple and transverse versions, precedes a study of pedagogical material and repertoire. The work of William Bainbridge, who modified the flageolet to simplify its technique and hence enhance its suitability for amateur players, is emphasized, along with his skill as an innovator of complex flageolets. The flageolet attracted a small number of professional exponents who tended to favour the French form of the instrument.

The principal focus of the article is an examination of the role of the flageolet within the context of musical praxis in England and its societal implications during the long nineteenth century. After consideration of matters of finance, social class and gender, the article examines the use of the flageolet by amateur and professional musicians, particularly highlighting the importance of the instrument in domestic music-making as well as in amateur public performance. Professional use of the instrument within the context of the concert hall, the theatre, the ballroom and the music hall is explored and examples given of prominent players and ensembles, some of which were composed entirely of female musicians. Final paragraphs note the playing of the flageolet by itinerant and street musicians.

While some seventeenth-century scholars promoted natural history as the basis of natural philosophy, they continued to debate how it should be written, about what and by whom. This look into the studios of two Amsterdam physicians, Jan Swammerdam (1637–80) and Steven Blankaart (1650–1705), explores natural history as a project in the making during the second half of the seventeenth century. Swammerdam and Blankaart approached natural history very differently, with different objectives, and relying on different traditions of handling specimens and organizing knowledge on paper, especially with regard to the way that individual observations might be generalized. These traditions varied from collating individual dissections into histories, writing both general and particular histories of plants and animals, collecting medical observations and applying inductive reasoning. Swammerdam identified the essential changes that insects underwent during their life cycle, described four orders based on these ‘general characteristics’ and presented his findings in specific histories that exemplified the ‘general rule’ of each order. Blankaart looked to the collective observations of amateurs to support his reputation as a man of medicine, but this was not supposed to lead to any kind of generalization. Their work alerts us to the variety of observational practices that were available to them, and with what purposes they made these their own.

During Vladimir Putin’s third presidential term, the Russian government and media’s rhetorical embrace of illiberalism, patriotism, and chauvinism was accompanied and partly facilitated by the invocation of historical precedent and “correct” historical understanding. Politicians stressed the importance of a shared historical memory to Russian national identity, rendering the interpretation of history a question of patriotism. The government and state-supportive media then used “patriotic” historical memories to legitimize government policies. Through framing analysis of three significant episodes—namely, the Ukraine Crisis, imposition of sanctions, and Russian intervention in Syria—I outline how the government and state-supportive media conflated these events with supposed historical precedents. This conflation made “patriotic” (or government-approved) history an everyday topic of discussion, but it also confused supporting government policy with celebrating historical triumph (or condemning historical tragedy). In this way, the government co-opted the emotional power of the history they invoked for the purposes of legitimizing their policies. This was compounded by the government and state-supportive media using and citing images and descriptions of ordinary people performing their patriotism in a manner that simultaneously demonstrated awareness of Russian history and support for the government.