2001

Martin Johnes explores why sport is an important topic for historical study.

Margaret Brennand of the Public Record Office on the launch of a major online resource for local and family historians.

John Laurence presents a Reporter’s View of Vietnam.

Karen Thomas presents the struggles for Sahrawi identity, past and present, in North Africa.

Paul Dukes takes a fresh look at the Cold War in the light of some recurring themes of Russian and American history since the 18th century.

LCC housing architects and their work between 1893 and 1914, by Michael Crowder

Christopher Haigh reflects on the life and work of the great Tudor historian, who died in July.

Jim Kelsey looks at the current transformation of the Royal Albert Hall.

A new translation of Democracy in America and a monograph

York Membery looks at the advertisements that graced the first issue of History Today, and sees in them a reflection of the magazine's own past, and of a...

Saki Dockrill reviews several works on US involvement with Vietnam

Aram Bakshian, Jr. takes a wry look at the recent American presidential elections.

Richard Overy argues that the lesson Hitler Drew from 1914-18 was not that a major war should be avoided, but that Germany should prepare more systematically so...

Philip de Souza considers the impact of piracy on Roman economic and political life

Sean Lang has built his passion for history on several key experiences, both in terms of teaching and learning.

Charlotte Crow reviews the Museum of London exhibition tracing three centuries of artistic creativity in London.

President William McKinley was shot at a public reception during the Pan-American Exposition in the city of Buffalo on September 6th, 1901.

Isabel Hariades traces her life in history publishing back to a rich education in Edinburgh and Greece.

David Dutton analyses Austen Chamberlain's impact on British foreign policy, and European affairs, between the wars.

Anne Pointer rounds up the latest in history publishing

John Erickson reviews the recent controversies surrounding Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union.

Geoffrey Best, doyen of Victorian history, demonstrates that not all leading scholars start out as swots

Lord George Gordon was born on December 26th, 1751.

August 17th, 1601

Edgar Feuchtwanger assesses Bismarck's controversial career and legacy.

Julian Reed-Purvis investigates Stalin's role in the origins of the great purges.

Douglas Johnson, historian of France and HT academic board member, explains how a youthful attraction to libraries opened doors for him.

Martyn Housden reviews the second half of the new Hitler biography.

Jeremy Black is disappointed by a new series.

Roland Quinault adds to our Portrait of our Britain series by looking at the state of the islands immediately following the Second World War.

Started in 1947, to grow peanuts in Tanganyika as a contribution to both the African and British economies, the Groundnuts Scheme was abandoned four years later on...

On the 60th anniversary of the sinking of HMS Hood, Malcolm Gaskill looks at the prosecution of medium Helen Duncan for witchcraft in 1944.

David Johnson looks at the art of Sayers and Gillray and the role of pictorial satire in the destruction of a government.

Paul Stephenson assesses three very different approaches to the eastern half of the Roman Empire

February 6th, 1651

Isabel de Madariaga looks at the personality and achievement of the controversial Empress of Russia.

September 6th, 1651

Nicholas Orme investigates toys, games and childhood in the Middle Ages.

Churchill was re-elected on October 26th, 1951, only a month away from his seventy-seventh birthday.

Solving the mystery of the British Prime Minister's wartime recordings.

Pedro II and the making of Brazil (1825-91) by Roderick J.Barman

John Beckett investigates the thorny, and sometimes illogical, issue of what makes a City.

Susan Walker looks at our image of the great queen, as a major exhibition on her life opens at the British Museum.

Andrew MacLennan, longtime history editor at Longman Publishers, explains why his love for the subject is simply second nature to him.

Julian Swann reviews real and imagined conspiracies in early modern Europe.

How far, asks R.D. Storch, did the reforms in the system of law enforcement, and the detection, trial and punishment of criminals introduced in the nineteenth...

Janet L. Nelson reviews a book by medievalist Malcolm Gaskill

Jeremy Black reviews a work by Peter King

Keith Thomas reviews new books by Barbara Benedict and Peter Burke

Richard Cavendish marks the somewhat mysterious death of a Georgian prince, on March 20th, 1751.

Guiseppe Verdi, described by the Italian parliament as 'one of the highest expressions of the national genius' died on January 27th, 1901, aged 87.

Kate Greenaway, 'the uncrowned queen of the golden age of children's book illustration', died of cancer, aged fifty-four, on November 6th, 1901.

Philippe Pétain died on July 23rd, 1951, aged 95, at Port Joinville in the Vendée region of France.

October 24th, 1601

Tom Griffiths continues our series on History and the Environment, travelling into the longue durée of the Australian past.

Penelope Johnston explores a new museum of Canadian military history.

Penny Young reviews the painstaking recreation of an ancient Syrian monastery.

Continuing our History and the Environment series, Harriet Ritvo looks at the role of big-game hunting in spreading awareness of the need for conservation

Anthony Kersting, architectural photographer, describes how his passion for buildings was fuelled by a Middle Eastern posting during the War

Museum of London site offering an overview of life in Roman London...

John D. Pelzer shows the connections between Jazz, Youth and the German Occupation.

Anthony Bryer takes a Byzantine view of time and identity.

 Lucy Marten-Holden, winner of the first Royal Historical Society / History Today award for the undergraduate dissertation of the year, explores the thinking behind...

Stephen Halliday investigates the murky world of financing the London Underground.

Reflections from the editors of History Today, Rodina and Damals on the meaning of 1945.

Jason Edwards takes a fresh look at attitudes to the nude in Victorian art, to coincide with Tate Britain's major exhibition on the subject opening this month....

The speech, which Elizabeth I gave in the Palace of Whitehall on November 30th, 1601, was know at once, and ever afterwards, as Queen Elizabeth's Golden Speech....

David Brewer reviews this comprehensive new guide to the history of Greece

David Lowenthal introduces our new series on History and the Environment with an overview of the subject and of human interaction with the world we inhabit.

Geoff Metzger, head of The History Channel in the UK, describes a youth well spent at the movies.

David Brewer shows that while ‘ethnic truth’ does little to explain history, history does much to explain ‘ethnic truth’

Jonathan Williams and Andrew Meadows review the history of the various currencies that were replaced by the Euro.

John Clayton assesses a new study of Stalin's Russia.

Richard Cavendish recalls the death of the pirate William Kidd, executed on May 23rd, 1701.

Neil Evans compares two histories of popular and political culture in Wales

Richard Hodges reviews a book by Barry Cunliffe

David Hey looks at what our surnames can tell us about our origins.

Bruce Collins considers the mixture of adventurism, disaster, and lethal reprisal that marked British activities in Afghanistan under Victoria

Siegfried Beer looks at the links between The Third Man and British intelligence.

Robin Evans shows that the neglect of the history of Wales, and of other small nations, impoverishes our historical understanding.

Angus Mitchell shows that new scientific methods are sometimes unable to settle old historical controversies.

June 16th, 1701

Stuart Leibiger looks at one of the most significant relationships behind the politics that produced the American Constitution.

David Ellwood shows how anti-American feelings today have roots and parallels in the past.

Geoffrey Roberts explains the fateful sequence of events from the Nazi-Soviet Pact to Hitler's invasion of the USSR. 

Richard Pflederer reviews a new global history of the last century

Simon Lemieux provides guidance on essays comparing the performance of the two adversaries in Victorian Britain.

Ron Noon explains the birth and examines the impact of a potent symbol of free enterprise.

Philip Lyndon Reynolds considers the battle between faith and reason in approaching a key subject of human existence.

Jez Ross takes issue with the traditional view that sees the early foreign policy of the second Tudor monarch as a costly failure.

Bamber Gascoigne tells how he overcame his aversion to history and took on the whole world as his subject

History Today celebrates 50 years in print

Tim Coates reviews the new Uncovered Editions from The Stationery Office which reprint government documents on historical topics.

In the second article in the Picturing History series, Sander Gilman reflects on images of the First World War and the photographs of Alan Cohen.

W. A. Speck reviews a book on 18th century fantasies of regicide by John Barrell

John Styles marks the opening of the new British Galleries at the V&A with a look at influences and innovations during a dynamic period of design history.

John Claydon charts a course across the complex minefield of Nazi historiography.

Daniel Snowman meets the biographer of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, media don and constitutional expert.

Roger Scruton presents his reading of a new history of the idea of rural England.

Donal Lowry reviews Ireland and the Great War by Keith Jeffery

Colin Armstrong reviews two new treatments of recent Irish history.

Simon Craig finds that bribery scandals in cricket are nothing new and that even Englishmen are not incorruptible.

Richard Godfrey previews the Gillray exhibition at Tate Britain this summer.

James Wilson, the Founding Father from Scotland, sought to enshrine his principles of democracy, explains Geoffrey Seed, in the constitution of the United States of...

Richard Wilkinson considers the character and standing of the much-despised Nazi Foreign Minister.

Kathleen Sands reveals a little-known episode in the career of the famous English martyrologist.

Philip Stott unravels the emergence of myths about the tropical rain forests.

Roger Spalding examines the continuing controversy that surrounds one of the key figures in the history of the Labour Party.

Martyn Housden tries to unravel what Hitler really meant when he talked about living space for the German people.

F.G. Stapleton defends the record of Italian governments from 1861 to 1914.

Robert Bud looks at the background to the major conference and displays at the Science Museum.

Curator Alex Werner marks the 25th anniversary of the Museum of London

Timothy Benson assesses Hitler's irritated reaction to being lampooned by David Low of the Evening Standard.

Daniel Snowman meets the historian of witches and witchcraft in Early Modern Europe.

Lyn and Michael Hymers explain what made them reconstruct life during the Blitz for the benefit of television cameras.

The Science Museum in London last year opened its largest historical gallery. Timothy Boon, its Deputy Project Director, explains the roles of history within the...

Roy Porter discusses how the British Enlightenment paved the way for the modern world.

Glen Jeansonne and David Luhrrsen on Gerald L.K. Smith, orator of the far right

Jan Bonderson describes a bizarre series of assaults on London ladies in 1790, and explores the effects of this and other heinous crime epidemics on the capital....

Michael Morrogh explains why Gladstone took up the cause of Irish home rule and why his policies failed so tragically.

David Dean looks at an Ontario exhibition presenting a new image of the Bard.

The Russian emperor was assassinated on March 24th, 1801.

Jeremy Black on the latest work from a high-profile historian

Brian Harrison explains how a national institution is being updated.

John P. Fox reviews two new works on this contentious period of German history and culture.

William D. Rubinstein reviews a new work on this controversial period in British history

Two new social histories of ancient Greece

Anne Pointer previews some of the latest books on Hitler and the Third Reich.

Simon Hall and John Haywood on the publication of a new atlas which fills an unexpected gap in the market

New collection of essays on the eccentric Russian leader

Lynne Stembridge looks beyond the homespun image of the Shakers, to reveal the substance of the original movement and its sometimes turbulent past.

Nicholas Soteri unearths the age-old roots of the Catholic-Orthodox divide.

David Cannadine sees the British Empire as a spectacular and colourful extension of the social order of the home country

New series of introductions to major historical topics

Charles Saumarez Smith, Director of the National Portrait Gallery, reflects on some of the issues raised by the exhibition 'Painted Ladies: Women at the Court of...

Stuart Hood recalls his involvement with the Italian partisans in 1943-44, and is surprised by the way events in which he participated are memorialised.

Daniel Snowman introduces our new anthology, published later this month by Sutton Publishers.

Dan van der Vat discusses Jerry Bruckheimer's 2001 film Pearl Harbor and the lessons the US has learned from the attack.

History Today was not the only exciting new publishing enterprise to be launched after a lengthy gestation in post-war Britain in 1951. The Pevsner Architectural...

David McKinnon-Bell assesses the degree to which Philip II's policies were motivated by religious zeal.

Peter Burke describes how the study of visual sources has extended the range of historical enquiry.

Pamela Pilbeam looks at the appeal of utopian socialism in early 19th-century France.

May 3rd, 1751

Richard Connaughton on the need to re-evaluate an over-looked conflict of the early 20th century.

Jeri DeBrohun looks at the meanings expressed in the style of clothes and personal adornment adopted by men and women in the ancient world.

Gillian Mawrey looks at the Scottish prizewinners for historic garden conservation and restoration

Martin Roberts regrets lost opportunities in the recent reform of A-level syllabuses

Daniel Snowman previews a new exhibition in Berlin.

June 5th, 1851

An Appreciation by Christopher Hill

Neil Evans seeks out the motives for the rash of racial tension seen on both sides of the Atlantic immediately after the end of the First World War.

John Spiller shows that, in constitution-making in the USA (1787-89), France (1789-92) and Great Britain (1830-32), some men were considered more equal than others...

Margarette Lincoln and Nigel Rigby look forward to Maritime History Week in July.

Mary Gould gives her tips for success.

Thomas S. Garlinghouse discusses the slow acceptance of archaeological evidence for sophisticated civilisation in pre-Columbian North America

The latest prize winners in historical publishing.

The 'puffing devil', the first passenger-carrying vehicle powered by steam, made its debut on a road outside Redruth in Cornwall on December 24th, 1801.

August 31st, 1751

Robert Curthose invaded England on July 21st, 1101.

Martin Evans discusses how the historian Robert Paxton shifted the terms of debate over the collective memory of Vichy France.

Mark Goldie reveals some vivid insights into London life before and during the Glorious Revolution, from a little-known contemporary of Pepys.

Unearthing the Cumbrian city's Roman past.

Richard Monte presents the forthcoming Polish film adaptation of Quo Vadis.

June Purvis reviews three new books on women and the First World War.

Daniel Snowman meets the historian of modern Ireland and biographer of Yeats.

Francis Murphy challenges the idea that science was religion’s foremost enemy, in this winning essay in the 2001 Julia Wood Award.

Christine Lalumia sees the 1840s as the key moment in the creation of the modern celebration of Christmas.

Alexandra Walsham looks for the meaning of unusual phenomena widely reported across early modern Europe.

Mary Ann Steggles recalls the circumstances of the many monuments to Queen Victoria that were erected in India, and traces their fate.

Anthony Bryer considers the life and work of this great historian, who died in November 2000.

Paul Preston looks at the continued interest in the 1930s conflict, the subject of a new exhibition at the Imperial War Museum.

The first Christian missionary to the country, Francis Xavier, departed from Japan on November 21st, 1551, having made perhaps some 2,000 converts.

Helen Rappaport tells the story of James Abbe, a little-known American photographer, whose images of the USSR in the 1930s record both the official and unofficial...

Keith Randell, founder of the inspiring textbook series Access to History, explains how he found his own way in.

David Blaazer traces rival nationalisms within the British Isles from banknotes.

Aubrey Burl explains how the myth of the stones transported from south Wales to Salisbury Plain arose and why it is wrong.

Mark Clapson considers that suburbia holds the key to recent history on both sides of the Atlantic.

Museum of New Zealand

Gabriel Fawcett looks at the efforts being made by history teachers in Germany to combat racism and neo-Nazism.

Vivienne Crawford examines the medicinal history of cannabis in Britain.

October 25th, 1951

Richard Cavendish explains how the Act of Settlement, signed by William III on June 12th, 1701, brought the Hanoverian dynasty to the throne.

Robert Hole shows how important historical context is for an understanding of the most significant document in American history.

Edward Lucie-Smith

Hannah Diamond and Claire Gorrara examine recent debates over resistance to the German occupation of France.

Australian prospectors struck gold on February 12th, 1851.

Richard Cavendish marks the anniversary of an important Scandinavian battle, which originally took place on April 2nd, 1801

Japan's 124th Emperor was born on April 29th, 1901

In his recent Colin Matthew Memorial Lecture to the Royal Historical Society, Peter Hennessy analyses the power relationships within New Labour

Roy Porter opens our new series on Picturing History, based on a series of lectures organised in conjunction with Reaktion Books, and shows how 18th-century images...

Robert Bickers reviews the legacy of the 1900 uprising.

Paul Adelman explains a major turning point in modern British history.

Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones explains the historical roots of the arguments surrounding the CIA following their failure to anticipate the attacks of September 11th.

Martin Daunton reviews a mammoth survey of the role of money in the modern world by Niall Ferguson

Donald M. MacRaild reviews a new work by Marianne Eliott

Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones and Mary Harlow introduce a major conference on clothing in ancient Greece and Rome.

Annual competition for essays on Oliver Cromwell.

Michael Hunter tells how a mysterious phenomenon in the Highlands sparked a debate between scientific virtuosi and urban sceptics, in an episode that helps shed light...

John Crossland reviews a book by Michael Smith

Richard Cavendish remembers the events of February 25th, 1601

Richard Cavendish provides a brief history of the Miss World contest, first won by Miss Sweden, Kiki Haakinson, on April 19th, 1951.

America's "motor city" was founded on July 24th, 1701.

Alistair Horne finds little of merit in a repeat biography of the wartime leader from Nigel Hamilton.

Ian F.W. Beckett compares two new histories of the First World War

Richard Bessel reviews the controversial new book by Lothar Machtan

Michael Williams continues our series on History and the Environment by considering how long humans have been making ever-growing inroads into forests.

Jeremy Black reviews a book on empire by David Armitage

Richard Cavendish describes the events leading up to the nationalisation of Iranian oil fields on May 2nd, 1951.

Denise Silverster-Carr on the history of this unique resource for research.

Richard Cavendish explains how the Kingdom of Libya was established on December 24th, 1951.

The Prussian Kingdom was founded on January 18th, 1701, when the Elector Frederick III had himself crowned Frederick I at Konigsberg.

Edward Corp looks at the life of a monarch in exile, on the 300th anniversary of his death on September 16th, 1701.

Rosemary Moore

Elaine Murphy looks at the two families who dominated the private provision of care for the insane in London in the early 19th century.

Alastair Dunn reviews the afterlife of an English rebel.

Peter Gray and Kendrick Oliver review the debate surrounding the commemoration of historical disasters.

Paul Brassley puts MAFF's policy towards Foot and Mouth Disease into historical perspective.

Andrew McCulloch draws attention to an important omission from a recent television reconstruction on 1940s London

Thomas Fleming's comments on the many calls for 'unconditional surrender'.

David Moulson looks at the history of pewter, as a new dedicated museum opens in Stratford-upon-Avon.

Peter Neville surveys the growth of republicanism in Ireland to the present day.

Peter H. Wilson suggests that the aggressiveness of Wilhelmine Germany was not necessarily a direct consequence of the Prussian social system of the eighteenth...

Geoffrey Woodward assesses how great an impact the Turks had on sixteenth-century Europe.

Christopher Haigh on a rich reassessment of Tudor politics and protest.

Reggie Oliver looks at the links between some of the highest-placed women in Louis XIV's court and some notorious Parisian dealers in drugs, death and the dark...

Case studies of the power of film in Britain, Italy, Germany and Russia

Russel Tarr asks key questions about the religious radicals of the 16th century.

September 8th, 1051

March 24th, 1401

Tony Aldous looks at the genesis and reception of the Royal Festival Hall, like us celebrating its 50th anniversary this spring.

Isaac Merritt Singer did not invent the sewing maching, but he patented the first practical and efficient one, on August 12th, 1851.

Matthew Hughes on new evidence on the 1961 death of the UN Secretary-General.

Alan Farmer shows how the Republic survived the threat from the Right before the First World War.

William Rubinstein reviews new approaches to the Third Reich by Albert Lindemann and the award-winning Michael Burleigh

Graham Darby examines the nature and effects of the war that dominated the first half of the 17th century.

Jason Tomes looks at the reign of King Zog.

Duncan Wilson looks at the history of the Strand site.

Christopher Wilk presents the new galleries presenting the history of design in Britain

John MacKenzie reviews the impact of Queen Victoria in shaping a new national identity and institutions, as the V&A opens its new exhibition on the Victorian...

John Parker on two contrasting treatments of West African history

David Hockney explains how a question about some Ingres drawings led to a whole new theory of Western Art

Geoffrey Regan explains how the experience of boredom in the classroom set him off into a career as inspirational teacher, writer and broadcaster

Robert Bickers on a tale of betrayal in 18th century China

Robert Pearce reviews the responses to our annual survey of the world of undergraduate history in British universities.

Randal Keynes reviews a work by James Secord.

'Frankly I am ashamed of being a Briton for the treatment we have meted out to the Boers as revealed by you and so justly condemned in your pages’ - John Burns to...

Melissa Lane looks at the reputation of the great philosopher. both at the time of is death and in subsequent debates about democracy.

Peter Furtado places the events of September 11th, 2001 in historical context.

Richard Vinen shows how events of the last 10 years have forced him to rethink his own assumptions about the past.

William Rubinstein continues his survey of topics of enduring popular debate by examining the controversy surrounding the true identity of England's famous bard....

Paul Thompson examines a book on the people who made up Shakespeare's England.

Joseph Rykwert considers what has led people through the ages to make collections, sometimes of the most unlikely objects, and discusses the value of their activities...

Andrew Robinson enjoys contradicting the image too many people have of the medieval period.