Transactions of the Royal Historical Society is an annual collection of major articles representing some of the best historical research by some of the world's most distinguished historians. Volume twenty-one of the sixth series includes the following articles: 'French crossings II: laughing over boundaries', 'Thinking with Byzantium', 'Why were some tenth-century English kings presented as rulers of Britain?', 'The Reformation of the generations: youth, age and religious change in England, c.1500-1700', 'Markets and cultures: medical specifics and reconfiguration of the body in early modern Europe', 'Troubling memories: nineteenth-century histories of the slave trade and slavery', 'The meaning of 'life': biology and biography in the work of J. S. Haldane (1860-1936)' and 'The demise of the asylum in late twentieth-century Britain: a personal history'. The volume also carries the Report of Council from 2010-11.