Historical Memory

Harriet Tuckey’s relationship with her father was a difficult one. Only at the end of his life did she realise the importance of the contribution he had made to the most celebrated of all mountaineering expeditions.   

Seventy years ago this month a Nazi train was stopped by resisters as it travelled from Flanders to Auschwitz. Althea Williams tells the story of a survivor.

James Joll attempts to unearth the deep roots of modern Germany.

As the democratic franchise expanded in the 19th century, British historians were eager to offer an informed view of the past to the new electorate. We need similar initiatives today, argues John Tosh.

As a boy growing up in Munich Edgar Feuchtwanger witnessed the rise of Germany’s dictator at extraordinarily close range.

Greg Carleton explains how disastrous defeats for the Soviet Union and the US in 1941 were transformed into positive national narratives by the two emerging superpowers.

It is the responsibility of parents and politicians to define and pass on a nation's values and identity, argues Tim Stanley. Historians and teachers of history should be left alone to get on with their work.

Since the end of the Cold War there has been a marked increase in accounts of the past made by those considered to have been on the ‘losing side’ of history. But, warns Jeremy Black, we should all be wary of the forces such histories can unleash.

Tim Grady on postwar Germany’s attempts to remember the contribution made by its Jewish combatants in the First World War.

Inspired by the discovery of the frozen bodies of three soldiers of the First World War, Peter Englund considers the ways we remember and write about a conflict of which there are now no survivors left.

It is a deeply unfashionable thing to ask, says Tim Stanley, but might a nation's history be affected by the character of its people?

The desire of western governments, most notably those of Britain, to apologise for the actions of their predecessors threatens to simplify the complexities of history, argues Tim Stanley.

The anti-government protests in Egypt earlier this year swept through Cairo and Alexandria before measures could be taken to protect antiquities in museums and archaeological sites in those cities and across the country. Yet, argues Jonathan Downs, the impact on Egyptian heritage and the repatriation debate has been a positive one.