2008

Frank McLynn reviews a title on the state of the world in a momentous year in the 18th-century year.

 Nigel Jones reviews a fitting tribute to the British Tommy in this oral history of the last year of the First World War.

The First Arab-Israeli War

Robert Gildea describes a new Europe-wide project to investigate the impact of 1968 and its sometimes bitter legacy.

Mark Bryant introduces the man who drew the British Establishment at its most shockable.

Rebecca Abrams discovers the history of a forgotten Aberdonian doctor who could – if anyone had listened to his ideas  – have saved the lives of countless...

Our archive contains over 10,000 articles from History Today magazine on a host of different historical themes. Read these further reading articles on the Napoleonic...

Graham Gendall Norton reviews a work on A.L. Rowse by Philip Payton.

450 years ago this month, the young Elizabeth became queen of England. Norman Jones looks at evidence from the state papers, newly available online from Cengage,...

On the centenary of her election as Britain’s first female mayor, Andrew Mackay looks at the life of Elizabeth Garrett Anderson.

John Etty assesses the historical significance of one of the lesser known Tsars.

A new history of Algeria since WW2.

Between autumn 1855 and spring 1856, the attitude of Britain’s war leaders underwent bewildering change as their determination to bring the war with Russia to a...

Lessons from the Auschwitz Project. Robert Carr shares his experiences.

Alex Goodall looks back at the career of one of the shadiest agents ever hired by the FBI in its hundred-year history.

Alan MacColl explores exactly what the word Britain meant, after the Romans had gone.

When The People’s War was published in 1969 on the thirtieth anniversary of the outbreak of the Second World War, it set a gold standard for Home Front studies that...

Manus McGrogan traces the radical posters that flowered on the walls of Paris in the spring of 1968, while a new exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in London offers...

Index of all the articles published in Volume: 21

Index of all the articles published in Volume: 22

Index of all the articles published in Volume: 23

Index of all the articles published in Volume: 24

‘The high priest of eclectic beauty' - the output and interests of Frederic, Lord Leighton, make him a splendid representative of the cosmopolitan values and...

Mark Bryant on the work of Soviet cartoonists engaged in the epic struggle against Nazi Germany.

Forty years after Enoch Powell was sacked from the shadow cabinet by Conservative leader Ted Heath for his ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, Robert Pearce investigates the...

The Siege of Baghdad ended on February 10th 1258.

Stephen Brumwell examines how the death of a charismatic young British officer 250 years ago this month – and the involvement of his two younger brothers in...

Mark Bryant looks at the cartoons published in imperial Japan during the Second World War.

Jim Downs says that the Democrats should blame history for the dilemma they face in having to choose between Clinton and Obama for this year’s presidential...

Kate WilliamsHutchinson   414pp   £20ISBN 987 0091 794798  ‘Fond hope of many nations, art thou dead?’ wrote Byron of George IV’s daughter Charlotte (1796-1817)...

Christopher Follett reads the 18th-century correspondence between Danish explorer Vitus Bering and his wife.

Patricia Cleveland-Peck visits Tempelhof which is about to close for ever as an airport.

In the 400th anniversary of her death, the prominent Elizabethan is the focus of events in her native Derbyshire and elsewhere.

 History Today announces its awards for the best of 2007.

Sep 29, 1758

John Milton was born on Dec 9, 1608

Cartoons can allow us to see ourselves as others see us, often uncomfortably. Mark Bryant looks at cartoons produced across Europe about Britain’s involvement in an...

 The history of pugilism from the ancient Greeks to today.

Clive Gamble revisits the moment at which archaeologists realized that human prehistory was far longer than biblical scholars had imagined; and links this to today...

Anthony Aveni explains how the people planning great monuments and cities, many millennia and thousands of miles apart, so often sought the same inspiration –...

 The history of democracy in 20th-century Britain

Roger Howard asks how the discovery of oil affected relations between Britain and Persia in the early twentieth century.

James Williamson, who was highly commended in the Royal Historical Society/History Today undergraduate dissertation prize 2006, asks whether accepting US economic...

 Christopher Dyer is impressed by this Victoria County History on an Oxfordshire market town.

Derek Wilson believes students of the Tudor era as well as history lovers will enjoy this biography of Elizabeth I's trusted royal councillor, William Cecil.

Trea Martyn describes how urban living and a historical oasis in the capital inspired her interest in garden history, and in Elizabethan gardens in particular.

Model of Christian kingship or brigand Dane made good? Eric Christiansen examines the enigma of Canute.

Peter Marshall asks how diligently Wolsey served his Church.

Paddy Hartley describes how an interest in the treatment of facial injuries in the First World War led him to develop a new form of sculpture.

Chaplin's coffin was stolen from a Swiss cemetery on March 2nd, 1978.

Jeremy Black recommends a title exploring Gallic society and culture from the French Revolution to the First World War.

Lucy Winstanley describes an unusual cemetery of the 1914-18 War, the burial place of Chinese workers who joined the Allied forces in the war against the Kaiser.

Elizabeth Gaskell wrote Mary Barton, her novel about working-class life in Manchester, 160 years ago. It was written from the heart, says Sue Wilkes, even though it...

Sue Donnelly introduces the archives of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and a project to make them accessible to a wider audience.

To coincide with ‘Cold War Modern’, a major new exhibition at the V & A in London, its consultant curator, David Crowley of the Royal College of Art, looks back...

Peter Linebaugh finds inspiration in the worldwide and timeless assertion of common rights, expressed in Magna Carta.

Graham Gendall Norton reviews Cornwall and the Cross: Christianity 500-1560

York Membery found much to savour when he paid a visit to the medieval town of Cortona for the Tuscan Sun Festival.

Nigel Saul investigates the building of Salisbury Cathedral, the Gothic masterpiece built in double-quick time.

Puritan souls may hide a cavalier approach to clothes, according to Patrick Little as he explores fashion at the court of Oliver Cromwell.

Bill Wallace looks at the anniversary of the Prague Spring in 1968.

Anthony Smith challenges the modernist view of nationalism that traces its origins to Revolutionary and post-Revolutionary Europe.

Edmund West looks at attitudes to deafness and the education of the hard of hearing, over the centuries.

Gabriel Ronay revisits the story of a Crown Prince’s suicide pact with his mistress and finds the evidence clearly pointing to murder. 

October 6th, 1101

Jo Woolley and David Smurthwaite of the National Army Museum look at Desert Warfare in the Second World War and more widely.

R. E. Foster puts the dissolution of the monasteries into historical context.

Robert Pearce investigates the career of the Third Reich’s ‘evil genius’.

Alan Sharp looks at the factors shaping national policies in the weeks preceding the Paris Peace Conference, when the failure of the victorious allies to agree on...

Rowena Hammal explains why the United Provinces enjoyed a ‘Golden Age’ in the first half of the Seventeenth Century.

Richard Sugg searches history to explain the phenomenon of aggressive cannibalism, following recent allegations from Iraq.

Steve Morewood investigates Anthony Eden’s frenetic diplomatic efforts to forge a Balkan front to save Greece from Nazi Germany and the controversies that resulted...

The visually spectacular Scottish capital witnessed fierce dynastic struggle before it welcomed the spirit of the Enlightenment, as Patricia Cleveland-Peck...

 How should a society acknowledge the history of minority communities within its borders, particularly minorities that have suffered at the hands of the majority?

 Peter Furtado reflects on this issue and his time as Editor of History Today.

 Some jokes are so venerable they deserve a ‘History Today’ article to themselves.

 Tibet, the ‘Forbidden Land’ ever since 1793 when it banned foreigners from entering, has long been an object of fascination, perhaps to Britons especially, since...

Recently the prime minister has urged soldiers to wear their uniform proudly even when off-duty, and there certainly seems to be an attempt to foster civic pride in...

 Happenings were the in-thing in the 1960s, and the late 1960s – 1968 specifically – are the in-thing at the moment: so much so that the BBC is devoting a daily...

Sheila Rowbotham Verso   548pp   £24.99ISBN 978 1844 672950Edward Carpenter was the first brown-rice-and-sandals socialist – or, rather, since that particular...

Robert Pearce attempts to put the Prime Minister of 1970-74 into historical perspective.

Warmongering anti-semite, or constitutionalist and family man? Marc Morris takes a fresh look at the career of Edward I, whose reputation has suffered a roller-...

At the end of the First World War, the British monarchy sought to strengthen bonds across the English-speaking world. Frank Prochaska discusses the ambassadorial...

John Paul II was elected on October 16th, 1978. He was the first non-Italian pope to be elected in four centuries.

Linda Porter reviews a book by Anka Muhlstein.

R.E. Foster emphasises the threat to Elizabeth’s regime.

To understand why Americans believe their nation to be innocent of imperialism we must go back to the Founding Fathers of the Republic, says Graham MacPhee.

The founding father of nuclear physics was awarded the highest honour on December 10th, 1908.

Richard Hughes lends us the benefit of his expertise.

Patricia Cleveland-Peck finds out how family historians can research the lives of their ancestors in the fast-changing city of Shanghai.

Mari Takayanagi, archivist at the Parliamentary Archives, explains the significance of the Life Peerages Act,1958.

 Helen Rappaport samples this biography of the Lady with the Lamp.

One of William of Orange's earliest convictions was that the Dutch Revolt would never succeed without foreign support. 

Continental chefs dominated London’s restaurant world in the nineteenth century, says Panikos Panayi.

Tony Chafer examines the paradoxes and complexities that underlie belated recognition of the contribution of African soldiers to the liberation of France in 1944...

Terry Brown explores the arborial legacy of a penny-pinching duke.

In the event Spain and Portugal divided almost all of South America between, them but in the sixteenth century the French also had commercial and colonial...

Jean-François Mouhot traces a link between climate change and slavery, and suggests that reliance on fossil fuels has made slave owners of us all.

Graham Goodlad assesses the conduct of British foreign policy in the era of the Congress system.

The Mongolian past has been drawn by both sides into twentieth-century disputes between Russia and China, writes J.J. Saunders.

Roger Moorhouse visits a unique archive of diaries from German history

Peter Furtado reports on new developments.

When US astronauts were blown away by their first view of Earth from space, forty years ago this month, the moment re-energized One World ideals of unity and peace,...

Neil Cossons describes how factory methods gave rise to a worldwide marketplace.

Richard Wilkinson reviews a book on the history of the English Civil Wars.

A New History of the English Civil Wars

Mark Bryant on cartoons of the man who shook Victorian society to the core.

Mark Juddery examines the impact and appeal of the film that has sold more tickets at the US box office than any other.

Nigel Watson reports the decision to keep Cornwall’s telecommunications operation going after all.

The emperor Hadrian presided over the Roman empire at its height, defined its borders and was one of the most cultured rulers of the ancient world. Neil Faulkner...

Clive Foss enjoys the architecture of Cuba’s capital, with varied elements from every era of its past making an exotic mix.

By positioning him firmly within the changing context of his times, Lucy Wooding sees coherence in Henry VIII’s religious policies.

Bridget McGing describes the fascinating but heart breaking task of working with her mother on the family archive, before it was too late.

A play on the Suffragettes reviewed by June Purvis.

Chris Aspin recalls the career of a man who gave a new word to the language.

Russel Tarr introduces the new International Baccalaureate, assessing its advantages and disadvantages compared with A Levels.

Amanda Forshaw advises how to approach ‘Themes’ units.

The two dictators met on May 3rd, 1938.

Ken Rise explains the process by which Hitler’s will became the law in Nazi Germany.

Germany's new Chancellor took power on January 30th, 1933.

Michael Morrogh sees value in historical films, despite their evident imperfections.

Jeffrey RichardsContinuum   227pp   £25 ISBN 978 1847 250070‘The very last thing Gladiator was about was actual Roman history’, writes Jeffrey Richards in his...

Mark Bryant examines how cartoonists saw the most traumatic years of American history.

The Beginnings of World War II

As you prepare to ‘cover up’ on the beach this summer, lie back and enjoy Robert Mighall’s true history of sunbathing.

Historian and film-maker Michael Wood recently visited Bristol Grammar School to talk about the BBC2 series The Story of India. Before the event began he was...

 Nigel Jones explores a book on a First World War poet.

John Spiller assesses James I’s impact on the Puritans and the Puritans’ impact on James I.

Ian Ronayne describes how the Channel Island was torn in the First World War between its role as potato producer and its patriotic duty to send men to fight.

Anthea Gerrie describes a museum that is also in itself a historical record of a city’s development.

Graham Noble assesses the significance of one of the earliest Marian Martyrs.

Christopher Hill marks the 300th anniversary of Bunyan 's death with a Portrait of a self-educated radical seen as a subversive by Restoration England’s Establishment...

Michael Mullett introduces the life and work of a remarkable Protestant leader.

Richard Cavendish charts the events leading up to King Zog I's coronation on September 1st, 1928.

Mark Bryant looks at the cartoons produced in response to the conflict which followed the Opium Wars between China and the West.

John Shepherd looks back to the turbulent Winter of Discontent, which heralded the demise of James Callaghan’s Labour government and paved the way for Margaret...

Oct 15, 1858

Roger Moorhouse examines a title on the 872-day German siege of the Russian city.

Pressure in the nineteenth century to introduce artificial lighting was as much about enhancing privacy as about reducing crime, according to Chris Otter.

A selection of readers' correspondence.

A selection of readers' correspondence.

David Winter visits a land beset for millennia by the fantasies of outsiders.

 Benjamin Ziemann is impressed by an innovative general history of the Nazi era.

Taylor Downing reviews a history of radio, by David Hendy

Glen Jeansonne and David Luhrssen describe how the pioneer aviator Charles Lindbergh was increasingly disturbed by the tension between technology and its impact on...

Asa Briggs, author of the monumental five-volume history of the BBC, talks to David Hendy about his thirty-seven year engagement with the story of British...

Charlotte Crow tells how a remarkable photographer will be celebrated in two exhibitions organized by the National Trust during Liverpool’s European Capital of...

Richard Wilkinson recreates the contest that marked, and marred, the British war effort in 1914-18.

In 1908 the Olympic movement visited Britain for the first time. Stephen Halliday describes how the British Olympic Association prepared for the Games with barely...

Kathryn Hadley discusses the fate of several villages destroyed in the First World War, now on military territory usually inaccessible to the public.

Simon Dixon has enjoyed a new biography of the ‘Sun King’.

Gandhi was shot on January 30th, 1948, aged seventy-eight, by the Hindu fanatic Nathuram Godse.

F.G. Stapleton introduces the ‘weather vane ideology’.

York Membery visits the In Flanders Fields Museum in Ypres where a new exhibition demonstrates how many countries and cultures were bound up in the First World War...

The famed radio broadcast of HG Wells' War of the Worlds took place on October 30th, 1938.

An exotic London theatre funded the building of the first Eddystone lighthouse. Alison Barnes has discovered what kind of shows it staged.

Sean Kingsley describes how hi-tech marine archaeology off the Atlantic coast of Georgia in the US has thrown a new light on the world of snake-oil salesmen.

Derry Nairn examines the wealth of online resources available for engaging with Military History.

‘God’s work more than ours’. In the first of three articles looking at the image of professional women at work, Anne Summers considers the tension between spiritual...

Asya Chorley describes the relationship between China, Britain and Tibet in the early twentieth century, and shares the unique experiences of the first European...

York Membery visits the capital of Bavaria and explores the historic heart of this twenty-first century metropolis – and its annual beer festival.

One of the great – but relatively ignored – atrocities of the twentieth century was the rape of Nanjing (formerly Nanking) by the Japanese Imperial Army in early...

A.D. Harvey reviews a history of the Napoleonic Wars.

Taylor Downing reviews a book on the Nazis and film.

Read more

Until June 10th, 1944, the German defenders of Normandy still retained the chance of throwing the Allied invaders back into the sea.

Today a Documentation Centre stands on the site of the former Nazi party rally grounds in Nuremberg. Neil Gregor reflects on the city council’s response to the neo...

 Whether or not mothers should nurse their own children has been a subject of debate from Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome through all of modern European...

by Daniel Lord Smail

Robert MuchembledTranslated by Jean Birrell Polity Press   224pp   £17.99 ISBN 978 0745 638768

Peter J. Beck describes the work of Honoré Daumier, born 200 years ago this month, which provided an early visual documentary newsreel and commentary on the key...

Michael Dunne reflects on past US presidential Inaugurals, and the words which still resonate.

In his twenties, Philippe Maurice was sentenced to death by guillotine for murdering a policeman. Saved by a change of government, he transformed himself through...

Mark Bryant describes how a nosey parker drew some inspiration from Old Nosey’s career.

Jacqui Livesey unmasks the cleric who revealed Lord Nelson and Lady Hamilton’s most intimate secrets.

Anthony Pagden describes how the conflict between Europe and Asia, which began over two millennia ago, hardened into an ideological, cultural and religious struggle...

Mark Rathbone asks why the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia emerged in the 1850s as the likely unifier of Italy.

Graham Goodlad reviews the controversial career of William Pitt the Elder, whose ascendancy coincided with Britain’s involvement in the Seven Years’ War.

Nicholas Orme asks what sense medieval English people had of the land they lived in, and what ancient sites and natural wonders did they visit.

Criminal poisoning at once fascinated and terrified Victorian society. Here Ian Burney shows how the extraordinary case of a doctor, hanged in 1856 for allegedly...

Neal Ascherson tells the story behind the making of an ambitious and unprecedented television history of Poland.

Reconciliation is not following in the wake of the search for truth about the past in one fomer Warsaw Pact country, Colin Graham reports.

James Barker reveals how parsimony and muddle in Whitehall in the first years of the British Mandate in Palestine almost led to disaster in August 1929.

Anthony Fletcher delves into the diaries of teenage girls in the Georgian and Victorian eras to explore the little-changing constraints, punishments and occasional...

Nearly three million tourists visited Pompeii last year, which makes it one of the most important archaeological sites on the planet. If you are planning a visit...

In 1909 Beatrice Webb produced a controversial report which proposed abolishing the stigma and penury of the Poor Law and its workhouses. James Gregory argues that...

 In 1909 Beatrice Webb produced a controversial report which proposed abolishing the stigma and penury of the Poor Law and its workhouses. James Gregory...

Michael Simmons draws on many years experience of living in, and reporting from, central Europe to look back at the upheavals in Czechoslovakia of 1968.

Frances Borzello seeks to explain the rise of women’s clubs in London before the First World War – and their equally swift demise.

Richard Wilkinson, our regular reviewer, has been reading books on the early modern and modern periods.

Patricia Cleveland-Peck visits the capital of French Canada which is celebrating its 400th birthday this year

Peter Clark celebrates some of the ‘awkward squad’ associated with eastern England.

Lucy Riall explores the social and political issues in Italy following the country’s unification. She shows how these issues became the focus for a dynamic new...

A public falling-out ended the close political friendship between two leaders of reform in early nineteenth-century Britain. A familiar scenario? Penny Young tells...

 Daniel Snowman approaches two books on aspects of sexuality, including some uncomfortable reading.

Mark Holland samples the millions of pages of old newspapers now available online.

International alarm over the terrorist threat is not new. Anthony Read relates how the appearance of Bolshevism created a state of near hysteria...

Kenneth Fincham and Nicholas Tyacke look at the ways ordinary people responded to  religious changes within their places of worship from the Reformation to...

Richard Wilkinson questions the motives of important historical figures, and of historians writing about them.

Edward Said’s controversial book is now thirty years old. A new exhibition of Orientalist paintings at Tate Britain provides a timely opportunity to revisit its...

Neil Taylor discusses how political change has left its mark on the Latvian capital’s Town Hall Square. 

Robert Kennedy was assassinated on June 5th, 1968, in Los Angeles, California.

Saint Marie-Bernarde Soubirous saw the first of her 18 "visions" in Lourdes on February 11th, 1858.

Peter Furtado joins the celebrations of the Victorian Society as it commemorates half a century of defending the country’s nineteenth-century heritage.

As Scotland celebrates five hundred years of printing, Martin Moonie’s investigations into the earliest printed books in Scots leads him on a trail to Paris.

 Excavations at Whithorn Priory in south-west Scotland have revealed a hitherto unknown settlement of Norse origin dating from AD 950-1100.

Mark Rathbone examines the importance of one Alabama town’s contribution to the civil rights movement.

 Alastair Bonnett investigates the intriguing and often controversial history of African Native Americans – black Indians – in the light of present-day concerns about...

Geoffrey Tyack remembers the renowned architectural historian who died on December 27th, 2007.

Today’s obsession with 18th-century femmes fatales distorts the history of women, says Hannah Greig.

Janet Voke describes how fifty tons of gold were evacuated from Norway four hours ahead of the Nazi invasion in spring 1940.

Anthony Johnson argues that an accurate interpretation of the great monument rests in the sophisticated geometric principles employed by its Neolithic surveyors....

Martin Evans talks to Helen Dunmore, whose historical novels range from the worst horrors of twentieth-century warfare to the luxurious world of late Republican...

Florence Donoghue reviews.

After 1918 the myth was created that the German army only lost the war because it had been ‘stabbed in the back’ by defeatists and revolutionaries on the Home Front....

Clive Pearson assesses the Soviet dictator’s war record.

Hugh Kearney reconsiders the models for and motives of Charles I's most controversial minister in 'John Bull's other island'.

Mark Bryant looks at the cartoons that adorned one of the Nazis’ most reviled newspapers.

David Abulafia, author of the newly published The Discovery of Mankind, considers Columbus’ first encounters with the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean...

 One of the most popular ways in which to view the history of the modern world is through the prism of colonialism, writes David Day.

Liz Homans looks back over the long campaign to remove the death penalty from the statute book in Britain.

Jeremy Isaacs, the producer of The World at War and Cold War, reviews the changing nature of historical documentaries made for the small screen, and their reception...

The Territorial Army, currently celebrating its centenary, has had a constant struggle to survive – and never more so than today, says Ian Beckett.

Richard Stoneman investigates the strange but widely held belief in the Middle Ages, that Alexander the Great had conquered more than the land, taking to the air and...

Robert Pearce asks why Labour’s period in office under Clement Attlee came to an end.

Tony Brenton tells of the clandestine correspondence between the future Catherine the Great and the British Ambassador to St Petersburg over eleven months from...

Peter Furtado previews a show of the British response to the Post-Impressionist view of modern life, at Tate Britain.

A dream world, or a culture of style that carried within it the seeds of self-destruction? Roy Foster marks the high tide of the 18th-century’s Anglo-Irish elite.

John Shepherd reviews a book on British football.

London 2012 Olympics will cost over £10 billion. In today's money, the 1948 Olympics would cost £20 million to stage and, as Stephen Halliday finds out in a book...

 July 11th, 1708

Richard Cavendish charts the life of Robespierre, who was born on May 6th, 1758.

Many who supported the campaign for compulsory military service in Edwardian Britain saw it as a necessary measure against the threat of invasion and the shadow of...

Michael Simmons reviews a book by Len Scott.

The Dowager Empress of China, Tzu-hsi, died on November 15th, 1908, after ruling China for almost fifty years.

The civil rights leader was shot dead on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel on April 4th, 1968.

Sixty-five years ago, the Nazis carried out one of their most spectacular atrocities in occupied France, destroying almost an entire quartier of Marseilles. John...

Hannah Boston explains how a single piece of evidence contributes to a wider understanding.

Richard Hughes shows there is more of historical interest to William Prynne than his famous auditory organs.

‘A week is a long time in politics’: the phrase is one of the enduring legacies of the Harold Wilson era. This month we report on our Annual Awards for 2007, and...

Dionysios Stathakopoulos surveys the history of the Byzantine Empire from its foundation in 324 to its conquest in 1453.

Aug 15, 1308

John Logie Baird gave the first demonstration of a colour television transmission on July 3rd, 1928.

Jason Burke describes how war correspondents benefit from a knowledge of history, and how history might benefit from their work in turn.

Richard Cavendish remembers the events of March 4th, 1933

In this useful and wide-ranging book, Robert Knecht, the doyen of British historians of Renaissance France, presents detailed evidence of the origins and evolution...

Tobias Grey meets the journalist who was at Charles de Gaulle’s side for twenty-six years.

John Lawton visits the fabled cities of the Silk Road.

Ian Mortimer, who has been an archivist and a poet before becoming a medieval historian and biographer, describes why a blend of empathy and evidence is the key to...

The popular image of Socrates as a man of immense moral integrity was largely the creation of his pupil Plato. If we examine evidence of his trial, argues Robin...

Corinne Julius visits a new gallery of jewels at the V&A to see what sparkle they add to our understanding of history.

More than 900 people perished in the Jonestown mass suicide of November 18th 1978.

Aug 27 1928

Richard Cavendish remembers what now appears the most brittle of peace pacts.

Nick Baron reads the memoirs of an independently-minded Ulsterman involved in the British intervention in North Russia, 1918-19.

Robert Knecht describes the shortcomings of Henry III, the last Valois king, and the circumstances that led him to become the first – but not the last – French...

York Membery looks back to the crunch 1920s election which saw the party of Gladstone narrowly pushed into third place – a position from which it has never...

Mark Knights reviews two books on the Long Parliament

Mark Bryant examines the wartime work of Captain Bruce Bairnsfather, creator of the famous ‘Old Bill’ character.

Mary wedded Francis, Dauphin of France on April 24th, 1558.

On February 6th, 1958, the BEA aircraft carrying the players and staff of Manchester United football team crashed shorlty after taking off at Munich airport....

Sept 29, 1938

Tsar Nicholas II and his family were murdered on July 17th, 1918.

Antonio Cazorla-Sanchez introduces a distinctive method of engaging with the past.

John Hanning Speke discovered the source of the Nile on August 3rd, 1858.

Graham Walker looks at how history and sport are interwoven in the sectarian rivalry between Celtic and Rangers football clubs.

Richard Cavendish marks a failed attempt on the Scottish and English thrones by the last Stuart pretender, on March 23rd, 1708.

Terry Jenkins explains why a failed assassination attempt on Napoleon III brought down the British government in 1858.

R. E. Foster explains the young Palmerston’s progress from Tory to Liberal.

June 22nd, 1258

Graham Gendall Norton reviews the tale of an Archduke during the break up of the Habsburgs, which, he says, offers food for thought to the European Union.

Jeremy Goldberg examines three stories of disputed marriages and discusses definitions of consent and how they impinged on a medieval woman’s right to marry when...

Daniel Beer looks at how much Soviet labour camps owed to the theories of Russian liberals on crime, its causes and how to treat it.

Anthea Gerrie explores a remarkable excavation, a Roman surgeon’s house in Rimini.

Charles II was the only king of England for two hundred years to survive exile and return to power. Anna Keay considers how he kept up his regal appearances whilst...

Glyn Redworth Oxford University Press   288pp   £16.99ISBN 978 0199 533534Today, at the Tyburn convent near Marble Arch, nuns pray over the remains of Roman...

Walter Harris introduces the retired soldier who brought sound recording to Britain.

January 5th 1919

 Nazi Germany in the Second World War

The treaties that ended the first part of the second Opium War were signed on June 26th and 27th, 1858.

Richard Cavendish remembers the events of March 3rd, 1918

Daniel Snowman reviews a book by Tim Blanning.

Nigel Watson recalls a mysterious explosion that occurred in deepest Siberia in June 1908.

Ian J. Bickerton and Kenneth J. Hagan argue that, contrary to Clausewitz’ view of war as a means for achieving political ends, the United States’ participation in...

A.D. Harvey reviews a new book on Napoleonic foreign policy.

For Sidney and Beatrice Webb, recording the struggles of early trade unionism - and subsidising its publication - were an integral part of their social commitment,...

Elizabeth Stephens examines how the surprise invasion of Israel by Egypt and its allies started the process that led to Camp David.

Charles Freeman explains why AD 381 was a defining moment in the history of European thought.

Banditry and the British in Early Nineteenth-Century India

Putting the Manorial Documents Register online creates a major resource for historians, reports Sarah Charlton as the project is extended to Berkshire and...

The head of Japan's Second World War government was executed on Dec 23, 1948

Britain’s concerns over binge drinking are nothing new says Luci Gosling, who describes how the brewing industry united to wreck Asquith’s Licensing Bill of 1908...

Andrew Watts has investigated the archives of the Cambridge examination syndicate to uncover the history of school exams.

Viv Sanders takes issue with some all too common assumptions.

Ben Barkow and Klaus Leist describe the remarkable cultural activities of Philipp Manes an inmate of Theresienstadt, the Nazi ghetto in north-west Bohemia. Manes’...

The Cold War has become this year’s hot media topic. Taylor Downing welcomes the chance to look more critically at the era of ‘mutually assured destruction’.

 Andrew Robinson enjoys an original blend of art history and history of science in this exploration of the medieval origins of the Renaissance.

 Britain, America and the Victorian Origins of the Special Relationship

Zephie Begolo discusses the symbolic power of the veil in Iranian politics, and its consequences for women, before and during the Islamic Revolution.

How dangerous was life in the Middle Ages? Sean McGlynn gets to grips with the level of violent crime, and the sometimes cruel justice meted out to offenders....

Mark Knights and a team of colleagues introduce a new method of working for researchers and students.

 BBC Sports Editor Mihir Bose explores a work on modern India.

Jeremy Black reviews two books on military history, ancient and modern.

Michael Morrogh shows that Renaissance men like Sir Walter Ralegh had a decidedly darker side.

Adam Zamoyski’s latest book about his ancestral homeland tells of a brief, largely forgotten, exception to the melancholy catalogue of Polish defeats....

Historians have long argued whether the years 1500-1700 saw a revolutionary change in the art and organization of war. Jeremy Black reports.

Hugh Williams describes how he and his colleagues set about compiling a list of fifty significant ‘things’ that have helped to shape Britain and the British.

Jeremy Black discusses how changing military and propaganda needs have influenced cartographers over the last 150 years.

As Fidel Castro finally hands over the reins of power after forty-nine years, Michael Simmons finds his country poised between past and future.

Peter Furtado welcomes an opportunity to discuss archaeology with the experts.

Nick Pelling suggests that credit should go not to the Netherlands but much further south to Catalonia.

Martin Pugh argues that life during the interwar years was brighter than has often been suggested, in spite of its association with economic depression and the...

David Stafford reviews a book on WWII.

 The pre-human history of the earth in the Romantic era

Graham Noble separates fact from Tudor propaganda.

Mark Bryant examines the history of the Second World War’s favorite cartoon pin-up.

Mark Rathbone analyses the causes and consequences of sudden changes of policy in nineteenth-century British politics.