Interwar period

The British Battalion of the International Brigades, formed to defend the Spanish Republic against the forces of General Franco, first went into battle at Jarama in February 1937. It was the beginning of a bruising, often dispiriting campaign, as Christopher Farman explains.

The Treaty of Versailles, negotiated by the fractious Allies in the wake of the First World War, did not crush Germany, nor did it bring her back into the family of nations. Antony Lentin examines a tortuous process that sowed the seeds of further conflict.

A class confrontation at the Epsom Derby of 1920.

Anne Sebba revisits Michael Bloch’s article, first published in History Today in 1979, on the historian Philip Guedalla’s enthusiastic but misguided support for his friend, Edward VIII.

The idea that the German foreign office during the Nazi period was a stronghold of traditional, aristocratic values is no longer tenable according to recent research, as Markus Bauer reports.

On July 25th, 1943, King Victor Emmanuel III said to Mussolini: 'My dear Duce, my soldiers don't want to fight anymore. At this moment you are the most hated man in Italy.' Mussolini was forced to resign. Here, Alfio Bernabei reveals evidence of an unknown London-based plot to kill the dictator in the early 1930s.

Richard Cavendish describes the maiden voyage of the Queen Mary on May 27th, 1936.

What was it like to grow up in Nazi Germany in a family quietly opposed to National Socialism? Giles Milton describes one boy’s experience.

Graham Darby points to common errors and omissions that should be avoided.

In October 1935 Mussolini’s Fascist Italian forces invaded Abyssinia (now Ethiopia) at a crucial moment in the run-up to the Second World War. Daniel Whittall looks at the complex issues the invasion raised in Britain and the responses to it, especially from black Britons.

Juliet Gardiner explains why her new book examines a short period of the 20th century and how she attempts to achieve a panorama of experiential history that gives readers a real feel for a slice of time.

In the years leading up to the Second World War, France was riven by political division as extremes of left and right vied for power. Annette Finley-Croswhite and Gayle K. Brunelle tell the tragic and mysterious story of Laetitia Toureaux, a young woman swept up in the violent passions of the time.

Nick Smart scrutinises Chamberlain's foreign policy and the historiography of appeasement.